


In Screaming Color

by aimmyarrowshigh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Poe Dameron (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Not Star Wars: Bloodline-compliant, POV Poe Dameron, Pining, Poe-centric, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, The Force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-02-14 07:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13002771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: The gogglesclick. “I disagree. The Force always glows bright around you, Poe Dameron, but now it is singing. You must hear it. Ever since you were a little child and Shara Bey first brought you to me to show you off, the Force has had a love affair with you. Why are you keeping it waiting?”“I have no idea what you mean,” Poe says, and swallows down the dream of the Force tree back home.“Don’t you see the way those who command the Force are always drawn to you?” She touches his face again, palms against his cheeks grown stubbly over the long day. “Your good heart is like a well of the Light, my beautiful boyfriend. Your mother, Shara Bey, she was the same. It is why Luke Skywalker entrusted her, and you, with the Force tree. I think your role in the fight is to sow seeds of the Light in any way you can. Those to whom the Force calls find their way to you. It is inevitable.”--Or, Poe has a lot of feelings, gets a lot of therapy, and tries to figure out who a fighter pilot will be once the fight is over.





	1. PRELUDE: REY

**Author's Note:**

> WELP, I started this shortly after TFA when I binged Shattered Empire and Before the Awakening because of my Massive Poe Feelings, and it was going to be like a 4k PWP, but uh, then POE had Massive Feelings, and it's two years later and it's over 75k long and still not done, but I wanted to post it before TLJ came out AND I TECHNICALLY MADE IT. BY 20 MINUTES. 
> 
> Because I started it so early in the SWST process: it was begun before the Poe comic, so Snap/Kare are not a thing. This is not a statement about Snap/Kare; I love that ship and have written for them. It was begun before Bloodline, so this fic adheres to the originally presented timeline for the SWST (that Luke's Jedi academy was destroyed roughly 15 years before TFA, not six years). It does not feature any of the planets, timelines, characters, or creatures that were created for TLJ. I hope it is enjoyable anyway.
> 
> Finn DOES have his own character arc in this fic, and he will also have his own POV -- he's got stuff going on that is independent of Poe, just like Rey does, that Poe is not aware of as the main POV character. Poe's feelings towards and for the man who saved his life, and the whole Galaxy, are a driving motivation for him throughout the whole story, but Poe is also -- as we all are -- working from a single viewpoint. His own. He doesn't know everything.
> 
> I haven't posted a longform WIP in yeeeears so I'm Very Nervous About The Response, but please let me know your thoughts here or on Tumblr @aimmyarrowshigh.

_Green._

_Green has a smell, and it isn't the same here as it was on Jakku. On Jakku, green smelled like pus and corroded copper, a bad-salt scent. Or it smelled like veg-meat, a faint-bitter nothing that lingered more in the after-times, in the still-hungry time, more than while it was in the pan, the bowl, the mouth._

_But very rarely, three times rare, green smelled like spinebarrel stems, like water on the wind. Those three times, it smelled rich enough to taste, and Rey had, she'd picked so many spinebarrel blossoms and hung them up from the broken beams of the AT-AT to dry that her whole home had been flooded with the sweetwater aroma of green for days, and it was so good, so nose-tickling_ new _that she bit right down on one of the fresh stalks. Green had exploded on her tongue, sweet and bitter at the same time, and so _wet_ , it didn't make her thirsty like spongy veg-meat. The leaves felt like green, soft against her tongue, less bitter than the crunchy stem that oozed sticky sap. _

_Rey had gorged herself on green._

_But it was nothing, _nothing_ compared to this. _

_Rey looks down at the layers of fallen vines, crushed open by rooting animal hooves, and the rich black dirt under her shoes. Takodana?_

_Is she still on Takodana?_

_Maybe – maybe that wraith of a man was a nightmare. It never happened. _He_ never happened. Maybe if she runs faster she can get back to the Falcon, she can get back to Han, to Finn – they'll be alive and whole, alive and whole, she can find her way back to Maz's castle – _

_But this forest _smells_ different. The green is darker, wetter, it smells like fruit on the wind instead of cold water from Maz's lake (more water than Rey had ever seen; imagine having that much water, all to yourself). There's a fecund animal scent in the underbrush, like hot beating hearts and slick noses and sharp hair, and over Rey's head, a patter of wings swoops, jostles a green leaf almost as tall and broad-shouldered as Rey herself, lands on a branch with a whispery cry._

__Where is this place? __

_Rey can feel the Force radiating from every leaf, every animal, every bird, it feels like it's in the air itself that fills her lungs,_ Light Light Light _until she's dizzy, overwhelmed by how_ full _the universe is turning out to be in the green places. She has to reach out and touch a tree's smooth-curved trunk to steady her feet on the soft ground because this feeling, it's always been with her, but so much_ less _on Jakku. Right now, it's like the Force is in every part of her that pumps blood. It's in her bone marrow, it's inside her teeth, licking at her fingertips and between her legs. The tree has a scar in its bark, and under it something sticky wells onto Rey's hand. When she sniffs it, it smells sweet. She licks and recoils from the candy taste._

_Somewhere outside of this cover of endless green, there is a well of the Force that burns brighter than the rest. Over the rustle of the leaves under wings and crack of twigs and vines under tiny paws, Rey can hear the Light_ singing _. There were storytellers once around a fire at Niima who told a great, adventurous, romantic tale about a planet where aquatic animals bigger even than happabores would communicate by singing under the water, beautiful undulating songs that lured visitors closer and enchanted them. People with credits would travel from all across the Galaxy to be thrashed in the waves on tiny boats just for a chance to hear the creatures sing._

_That's the song Rey follows through the jungle._

_The trees break cleanly, scythed away to clear a plot of land, and Rey stops short so that she doesn't stumble right out onto someone's property. She knows what happens when a stranger comes to call, and she doesn't have her staff here – wherever this is._

_The Force is so sweet and pure here that her eyes well. Its song doesn't grow louder, but Rey can hear every note like it's singing right in her soul._

_The bright spot is a tree. Barely. It's nothing like the grand, endless, monstrous-towering trees that surround it in the dense green jungle. The bent trunk is thin as a thumb with four small fingers that shake in the lightest breeze off the rolling fields of pale green and bright nut-gold in the distance. Each leaf is so tiny that Rey can't separate them in her eyesight from this far away, like the tiny tree has a fluff of baby-soft green curls instead._

_It glows blue against the sunlight._

_"There." A woman stands from where she's gently patted rich black earth around the fragile Light tree's needy roots. "May the Force be with you, little guy." She dusts her hands clean against one another._

_The man beside her is wearing black gloves that Rey would have traded two days' portions or a motivator fan for, butter-soft leather that doesn't inhibit his wrists but covers his palms and fingers from the rough handle of a shovel, which he swings up to prop against his shoulder. He isn't much taller than the woman, but his shoulders are easily twice as broad. His arms are as thick around as her neck. Rey would feel better if she had her staff – a swing of that shovel with those corded arms would make it a formidable weapon. But his eyes are calm enough, as far as she can see from this far off, face relaxed around them. There's a stripe of dark beard running down his chin._

_He smiles at the woman and holds out one hand. "Let's go home, Shara Bey." The blue tendrils of the tree's Light wrap around him when he says her name, _Shara Bey_ , like it's a magic spell from one of the traveling storyteller's tales, too. _

_The woman – Shara – tucks herself right under one of those huge arms like it doesn't even occur to her that they could crush her ribs, if that's what he decided he wanted. "We should wake up Poe," she says, and the light –_

_When she says _Poe_ , curls of soft Light wrapping all around her and the man beside her and the house and the little fingerling tree and the jungle surrounding the simple house they're walking towards, all of them popping with sparks of blue Light that shivers and skips across surfaces like laughter. Rey wraps her arms around herself as the light and the Light blend, merging star by star like the rush-flood of the Galaxy bending into lightspeed._

__«Small Spanner» _Chewbacca growls from somewhere in the sky above the jungle's green, green canopy._ «We approach the landing coordinates. I will prepare Fierce Protector for medical transport. Take the controls.» 

Rey jerks awake. She grunts, hands finding her sore ribs. Her wrists were rubbed raw by shackles. Her head throbs, the soft matter inside aching like the wraith in the mask pulled it apart coil by coil and didn't bother to put it back in one piece. 

Rey moves into the captain's seat – Han's seat – left warm by Chewbacca's big body. She primes the coordinates, eases the ship out of hyperspace.

The atmosphere breaks in a blur of green, but here, it's dotted all over with brown in a thousand shades and marred by duracrete buildings in one drab, solid shade of gray. 

If she tries, she can still smell the jungle where Shara Bey and that man loved someone, or something, called _Poe_. 

And the Force did, too.


	2. Chapter One

_Cheers and spontaneous embraces filled the room with so much joy that no one paid any attention to who was hugging what representative of whichever species. Rey and Poe were not excluded, though their sudden, tight clinch of shared excitement led to a moment of mutual awkwardness._

_"Uh, hi," the pilot mumbled. "I'm Poe."_

_Rey nodded slowly, searching his face and finding that she liked it. "I recognize the name."_

After the debriefing, Poe skips the pilots’ victory party in favor of bringing the champagne flute back to his room for some slow sipping after a long, hot shower in real water, not just the sonic. If BB-8 whistles and bloops in utter adoration of [Hero-Rey!] the whole time, rolling along behind Poe so closely that he can feel the gentle heat of Beebee’s motors as it chirps about how [Hero-Rey ran up the sand like a speeder! Hero-Rey knows Teedospeak and Binary and Shyriiwook! Hero-Rey outran the rathtars! Hero-Rey saved Beebee-Ate from the bad Teedo and the very bad First Order!], then that’s fine, too. Poe is glad that someone so kind found his little droid—and the secret of Luke Skywalker.

He doesn’t bother with dressing after his shower, just dries off and climbs into his bunk nude, lights already off and nearly-empty champagne flute in hand. He nurses it, thinking over the losses they’ve suffered and the secret weapon that is yet to come. Thanks to Rey. He’s so lost in thought that he almost doesn’t notice the red light on BB-8’s optic trained, unblinking, on him from beside the mattress.

“What’s up, buddy?”

BB-8 rolls gently into the side of Poe’s mattress. [Does Friend-Poe like Hero-Rey?]

Poe smiles at his astromech and rests a hand on Beebee’s dome. “Why does she get to be your hero when I’m just your friend, huh?”

BB-8’s head tilts. [Friend-Poe always saves the day! He is the greatest! Friend-Poe is the best pilot in the galaxy!] It wriggles a moment. [Do you like her now?]

“Thank you, buddy, but that wasn’t what I meant.” Poe snorts and sets the empty flute on his nightstand. “I like Rey just fine, Beebee-Ate. I just don’t know her is all. We just met a few hours ago, not like you and her.” He pats the droid’s crown. “You got to have a big adventure with her without me.”

Beebee keeps rolling in little wiggles, its standard movement of calculation. [Do humans require shared adventures for affection?]

Poe slides down between the blankets and closes his eyes. “No, just… time, I guess. I like Rey, I promise. She saved you, didn’t she? So I gotta like her forever.”

BB-8 whistles happily and makes a little burbling click that Poe has come to associate with his droid’s attempt at good-night kisses. [I hope you have a restorative rest cycle, Friend-Poe.]

“You, too, little friend. Time to power down, okay?”

Beebee’s gyro whispers through the dark of Poe’s quarters for a moment, and then there’s a moment of blue light against Poe’s closed eyelids before the port near the corner of his desk starts its charging mode, all but shutting BB-8 down entirely after so long without a diagnostic.

Poe smiles against the pillow. Beebee’s emotional intelligence is simple, but it’s not wrong. Rey _is_ the true hero here.

Poe wakes the next morning to BB-8’s grabber pulling his blankets off as it midi-hums an old Yavi lullaby that Poe sometimes sings absentmindedly as he works on Black One. It can’t produce enough tones to hit every note, but it still makes Poe smile as he scrubs a hand over his face anyway.

“Alright, buddy. I’m up. Don’t get the zapper.”

BB-8 spins and thrusts Poe’s officer casuals at him, already chattering about finding [Hero-Rey!] so Poe can spend more time with her. [And then Friend-Poe and Hero-Rey and Beebee-Ate will be friends. Then we will visit Friend-Finn.]

Poe’s sense of victory falls in his chest as he finishes buttoning the olive-drab shirt over some angry bruises from the TIE’s ejector seat. Finn is still in the med-bay, then. He’d hoped maybe the injury wasn’t so bad. Poe has never seen someone suffer from a lightsaber wound before, but he couldn’t imagine them worse than the charring plasma from a blaster. It’s why blasters were invented, wasn’t it? To replace lightsabers in battle?

He doesn’t bother locking the door to his quarters as he follows Beebee down the winding corridor. His bootlaces are still untied.

When they get to the mess, most everyone is already gone. Pava and Snap are most likely in the hangar with Nunb to do an inventory checklist, and Poe… doesn’t expect to see General Organa in the common spaces for a while. Poe nods to a few tired-looking intel officers on his way up to the queue, BB-8 chirping out salutations along the way.

They both stop behind someone in grey flannels, standing stock-still at the tray chute. Long, thin white fingers clutch at the bioplastic like a lifeline.

[Hero-Rey!] BB-8 bumps right into the backs of her knees, and Rey startles, her feet dancing out into a defensive stance, tray raised as Poe jerks back, hands up. Beebee tilts its head. [I am sorry if I seem predatory like a bad Teedo. Do not worry, please; I do not have a trap-net.]

“Oh,” Rey says, and she relaxes, still holding the tray close even as she knees down. “I’m sorry, Beebee-Ate. I didn’t mean to scare you, either.”

[Did Hero-Rey not have a restorative rest cycle?] BB-8’s black lens dilates and contracts as it looks Rey over carefully.

“It was fine, really.” Rey looks uncomfortable at that. “Chewbacca let me sleep in the Falcon.”

[Friend-Poe is 9.76% less functional after a rest cycle spent in Designation: Black One than one spent in base quarters], reports Beebee. [I will tell See-Threepio to requisition Hero-Rey proper quarters. I will instruct the laundry droids to give Hero-Rey orange blankets like Friend-Poe. Friend-Poe is highly functional after rest cycles with his orange blankets. His reaction times improve by 0.36 seconds.]

Poe lays a hand on BB-8’s dome and pats with what he hopes is some finality. Rey doesn’t seem to notice his embarrassment, though, instead staring at the little droid with huge, soft eyes.

“I don’t need quarters all to myself,” Rey says. “Really. The Falcon is fine.”

“Rey,” Poe says before Beebee can babble any further, “You’re one of us now. You deserve a bed and a hot shower.”

Rey is suddenly very busy hand-polishing a scuff on one of BB-8’s ports. “I’ve never had a bed.” She scrubs harder with the heel of her hand, trying to smooth away the scratches from a fall or a collision or the constant rubbing of sand, and BB-8 makes a noise not unlike purring. “Don’t know what a shower is. I’m fine.”

“Oh, Rey, bud.” Poe looks down at the top of her head as Beebee hums. He wants to say, _you aren’t fine if you think you can’t have a bed_ or _how in the world did you survive all alone there_ or _you were kidnapped by Kylo Ren, so I know you aren’t fine, because I’m not, either_. But there’s a fierceness to Rey’s big eyes, even as she smiles at the little droid, that stops him. “Alright. Well, think on it, okay? And if you decide you want a shower, you can use mine until the General and Threepio find you a room of your own.”

[Friend-Poe has orange towels as well], BB-8 chirps.

“And an orange droid!” Rey says with her eyes wide. She stands, but keeps smiling at Beebee. “Fancy that!”

[I am fancy], BB-8 agrees, and does a little twirl. [I am custom-made just for Friend-Poe, the best pilot in the galaxy!]

Rey laughs. “Well, I suppose he’s lucky, then.”

She turns that smile on Poe, and he can see why Finn was willing to blow up a planet from the inside to get her back.

“I am,” Poe says. “I’m lucky that you found Beebee-Ate and brought it back here when you didn’t have to. I don’t think anyone else would have, besides you and Finn. You completed my mission and you saved my little buddy. We’re _all_ lucky.”

There’s a long moment that Poe can feel Rey measuring him up as she looks over his face in tiny, quick glances, like she’s searching for some kind of tell. She did this when they met yesterday as well, in the war room, flicked her eyes all over his face and up and down his body to feel him out. It flustered him then, made the words catch in his mouth stupidly like some kind of teenage kid.

It isn’t any less off-putting this morning, but Poe just smiles at her as gently as he can. BB-8 makes a low little sound beside him like it’s vouching for his honesty, big black eye looking from Rey to Poe and back again curiously.

“Alright,” Rey pronounces. Evidently she’s decided something from that smile. “Thank you.”

“Just the truth,” Poe says. He gestures towards the tray still in her hand. “After you.”

“Oh.” Rey’s brow gathers. “I don’t… I don’t have anything to trade and Unkar Plutt never gave credits. I was just… I wasn’t thinking.”

She puts the tray back on the pile and starts to leave at a swift clip. BB-8 had mentioned in its long, rambling tale last night that she’d taken Beebee with her on a dawn spelunking mission through a downed Star Destroyer, letting Beebee tell her stories about places that it had seen Star Destroyers as she climbed through the machinery to strip wires. Rey had been offered sixty portions of rations to trade it in to a big, ugly Crolute junkmaster, and she refused.

Poe manages to catch her elbow. “Wait, Rey, you don’t have to trade anything. Or pay. It’s just the mess hall. Three squares a day.”

“What’s a square?”

“Square meals,” Poe explains. “It’s just a saying. It means you get some protein, some carbohydrates, some vegetables, something to drink, whatever. Whatever you want. As much as you want. Really. There’s no catch.”

Rey’s eyes are huge, and she looks down at BB-8 for confirmation.

[This is an accurate explanation of the mess hall], Beebee beeps, and nods. [Hours of operation: 0400-0900. 1200-1400. 1700-2200. Hours of operation curtailed on Rest Days. Today is not a Rest Day. The time is currently: 07:17:59. Hero-Rey and Friend-Poe can eat breakfast!]

“Three meals?” Rey murmurs. Her eyes shine and Poe’s still holding her elbow when she starts blinking furiously and he doesn’t know what to do. “Three meals… every day? Fifteen meals a Standard week? Full portions?”

There are snacks hidden away in compartments all over the base, too, because people get hungry during different tasks and at odd hours; Poe has Almakian apples and protein bars in his quarters and Nutripaste in his flight suit’s pockets, just in case, and the Pilots’ wing has a small kitchen where they’ll all gather sometimes for Snap’s creations. He’s even seen the General wandering around in the middle of the night with a mug of hot chocolate from Lothal between her hands. And full portions… it’s still base food, and it’ll never even come close to being Abuelito’s cooking, but there are a few nights a month that are so good or Poe’s so hungry that he eats until he feels like he could burst. Compared to the meager amount in a full ration pack—what Rey must think of as a portion—it’s limitless.

“Yes,” Poe says. “And you never have to pay or trade or do anyone a favor if you don’t want. You’re here, you’re doing good work. That’s all that’s required of you.”

“And I can just… take food?” Rey asks. “What about water?”

“Water, too,” Poe says. “Juice, if you want. Blue milk. If you want alcohol, you’ll have to come to the Pilots’ wing, though, but it does flow pretty freely a lot of nights.” Rey still looks shell-shocked and suspicious, but Poe just squeezes her elbow and lets go to take a tray of his own. “But no pressure. If you don’t want a lot, don’t take a lot. Everyone’s different.”

“Everyone’s different,” Rey whispers. She doesn’t follow, just hangs back and watches as Poe slides his tray along the railing and loads it with perhaps a more involved breakfast than he normally eats, just so Rey can see that it’s possible. She’s too thin, even if she’s stronger than her size suggests, Poe thinks. He finishes by draining the dregs of a pot of caf and heads for a table near the windows: outside, the D’Qar sun is streaming over the tarmac and a light breeze shakes the leaves on all of the surrounding trees; the grass stalks ripple like waves beyond the duracrete. And this could all have been gone in an instant yesterday.

But it’s not. So it’s a beautiful day.

BB-8’s happy tootling announces Rey’s choice to eat and to sit with Poe before the chair slides out across from his. Rey’s tray is a mirror image of his, like she’d counted every grain and every flake in the moments he filled his bowls and made sure not to take a morsel more. She holds her fork like a weapon and checks over her shoulder a few times towards the supply droids, but she does eat. She chews with her mouth open and slurps her porridge.

“You have…” Poe trails off and gestures to his upper lip.

“What?” Rey asks. She tears the peel from a jogan fruit.

“Milk mustache.” Poe grins at her. “Peril of the good stuff.”

Rey smacks her lips together and licks the blue away, then wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “It’s good. Milk.”

“Yeah,” Poe agrees. “It’s better when it’s not powdered, but the base takes what it can get.”

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Rey argues, and there’s an edge in her voice that Poe should let it be.

Poe grins again. “Glad I have good taste. I didn’t think you’d want the exosquidra stew first thing in the morning.” He watches her for a long moment, idly patting BB-8’s dome with one hand and drawing his spoon across the bottom of his bowl with the other. “Do you have tasks for the day?”

Rey shrugs and swallows. She lifts her empty bowl and licks it clean. “I’m going to see Finn. And I suspect that as soon as the Falcon is vetted, I’ll see whether I can follow the map. To Luke Skywalker.” She grins, a little sleepy-looking now that she’s got food in her. “Did you know he was real?”

Poe laughs at that, because what else can he do? If he says too much—if he says all of it—then he’ll have to think about Han being gone, and what it felt like to lose Leia, Luke, Wedge. Ben. “Yeah, I knew. My parents fought with him.” He stands and takes up his tray before nodding to BB-8. “Rey, you coming, or are you going to stay and have something more?”

“I’ll come with you,” Rey says quickly. She mimics him, taking the tray and sliding it into the port. “Are you going to see Finn now?”

Poe nods. “Maybe he’s awake.”

* * *

He isn’t, but he should be. Finn should be awake and healthy and whole, and it should be Kylo Ren on a slab, hooked up to wires just to see whether his black heart is still beating. (And, if you ask Poe, it should not be. Kylo Ren killed Ben Solo, and Han Solo, and someday, Poe will kill him for Leia Organa. He tries not to think about it. It hurts his head.)

Poe and Rey sit at Finn’s bedside for… hours, it feels like. It’s easy to be silent with Rey, which Poe appreciates in a person. She holds one of Finn’s too-still hands in both of hers and watches Finn’s sleeping face for any sign of… something. Maybe it’s a Force thing. Poe watches, too, his breath metered out to the pace of Finn’s vitals on the monitor until his thoughts feel liquid and slippery and inconsequential. BB-8 quietly patrols around Finn’s bed in never-ending circles, its own circuits resting so far as Poe needs to know. They’re all here. They’re all safe. They’re all alive.

One of the silver medidroids chirps to BB-8, and Beebee nudges Rey’s knees gently. [Visiting Hours have ended. Friend-Finn must have quiet time now to improve his functionality.]

Rey lets go of Finn’s hand at once, but stands slowly, staring down at him. “What’s wrong with him, Beebee-Ate?”

Beebee confers with the 2-1TX medidroid before it reels away. [Lightsaber wounds are very rare. Documentation may be outdated. The Force complicates repair protocol.]

The Force complicates a lot of things, in Poe’s opinion. It is beautiful and terrible and he’s felt both: the Force tree back home and Kylo Ren peeling away the memories of playing in its shade like they were never real.

Poe reaches down and takes Finn’s other hand. He gives it a squeeze.

There’s a nudge at Poe’s leg. Poe looks down at BB-8 and crouches down so it can speak without tilting backwards. [Friend-Poe, I have a request.]

“Sure, buddy, what is it?”

[Designation: Twenty-One-Tee-Ex requires Hero-Rey to stay in the medical ward for examination], Beebee explains, whirring a little with anxiety. [I wish to stay with her, please. Friend-Finn is still in low-power mode. I do not like it.]

“Sure, buddy,” Poe murmurs, and gives BB-8 a comforting pat on the top of its dome. “Rey’s not in low-power mode. When she’s finished here, you can show her the fresher in my quarters, okay? If she wants. Otherwise, I’ll be in the hangar. Okay?”

Beebee bips and whirrs off to crowd up against Rey’s side.

Poe gives BB-8 a comforting nod that everything will be fine and then he takes a moment to stand back in the doorway and decide whether he really believes that will be true: just past the prone figure of Finn, still unconscious in his bed, Rey listens to the silver 2-1TX with a deep frown creasing her face. Her hand rests on BB-8’s dome as the little droid wriggles lightly.

Poe shakes his head and turns away. She’s a fighter, and she’s fine. Finn will be fine, too. He needs to tend to what remains of his squadron. On his way out of the medical ward, he knocks at the door of the base therapist and hands her his debriefing papers to be signed so that he can be released for active duty following a battle with casualties sustained to the Resistance.

Dr. Teksa stares at the papers, her glasses low on her nose as she reads, lekku raising and lowering at intervals. Poe taps his foot.

Neither of them says anything, and Poe _hates_ that.

He turns and leaves, making way for the hangar. He can see Rey’s silhouette through the thin curtains around a bay near Finn’s, and the round shape of BB-8 whirrs near the foot of the cot.

Everyone will be fine.

* * *

It feels good to have black polish and grime under his fingernails, but Poe still needs a shower. The fleet’s been decimated. After the genocide of the Hosnian System, they have no access to the backup of the Republic Navy, and Poe doesn’t even know how many of his former squadmates made it out alive. They’ll get a flood of new recruits now that the war is well and truly on, but Poe has no idea where they’ll find ships that can fly with any precision.

Compared to the maneuverability and speed of that TIE, he’s surprised the T-70s hold up. That thing could _really_ move.

(He’s been planning new mods for Black One ever since he figured out how to disengage that tether and they went screaming out into space, he and Finn. Rey could probably help him, he thinks, if she really did survive by scavenging the Graveyard of Giants.)

He’s already exhausted by the idea of training cadets. He wishes that Iolo were still here.

Poe opens the door to his quarters to see Rey’s bare front as she pulls on a pale tunic. Her face is covered, and Poe is stunned, not really having thought that she’d take him up on the offer for a shower, and all he does now is freeze. He _should_ step back out the door and reenter in a minute, after she’s settled, but his feet won’t move.

He fully believes her now that a simple bowl of nutriflakes in blue milk this morning was the best meal she’d ever eaten. She’s painfully thin. Poe can count her every rib, and the blades of her hipbones are sharp enough to bruise. He’s surprised that she has breasts at all, being so small, but she does, and he doesn’t want to notice that they’re—they’re nice, they’re round and pretty and tipped in dark pink. He can never un-know that.

The first knob of Rey’s hair emerges from the tunic’s neckline. Poe panics and whirls back out the door as quietly as he can. He presses his forehead to the cold metal and counts to ninety-seven before punching in his code again.

“Oh,” Poe says, feigning surprise. “Hi, Rey. Everything alright with the medidroids?”

Rey nods. She’s sitting on the floor now, fully clothed down to the boots, near Beebee’s charging port so they can play a hand of cards. “Finn still hasn’t woken.”

Poe nods back, then runs a grimy hand through his hair. “I’m uh, I’m just gonna clean up and then get dinner, if you want to join. The rest of the pilots would love to meet you and hear about the Falcon.”

“I’m not hungry.” Rey looks studiously at her cards. Poe can see the hand, and she’s got zip.

BB-8 whistles a stern noise. [Hero-Rey, you have consumed only 37.826% the amount of calories required by your medical plan.] Quicker than a wink, it punctures her fingertip with its hypodermic and has analyzed the blood before Rey can say _Ouch! What? Beebee-Ate!_. [Your blood sugar is low. You must eat dinner.] It makes the stern noise again. [Don’t make me get the zapper.]

“You really don’t want the zapper,” Poe says. He takes a clean set of casuals out of his footlocker. “Everyone’s nice, I promise.”

Rey looks sulky. “I’m really not hungry. I ate so much this morning.” She eyes BB-8’s ports suspiciously. “But I will try to eat something. For you, Beebee-Ate. Please don’t zap me.”

BB-8 toots in triumph and then challenges Rey to read her hand. Poe is laughing as he heads into his fresher and locks the door behind him—droids are terrible winners.

* * *

Beebee pulls Poe’s blankets off with urgency too few hours later, shrieking at high volume about how [Hero-Rey is leaving in sixteen minutes to find Designation: Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. Hurry, Friend-Poe!]

So he does. He’s still sleep-mussed and a little confused when he stumbles down the corridor, one boot on, but BB-8’s frantic squealing is a strong motivator.

Poe quite literally bumps into Rey on her way out of the med bay. Her mouth is set in a firm, sad line.

“No change?”

Rey shakes her head. “Nothing. I don’t know why I thought it would be different from yesterday.”

“He’ll be alright,” Poe says. “One of these days, it will be different from the day before. I bet he’ll wait for you to come back, though.”

Rey just looks sadder at that. “He only got hurt because he came to rescue me. He shouldn’t have, or—I should’ve—”

“Hey.” Poe touches her shoulders, and Rey looks him right in the eyes. It’s a more intense look than he would have expected from someone so young; Rey’s eyes remind him of the General’s, the way that she looks like she’s seen a thousand lifetimes already. “You did more than enough, and Finn made his own choices. We’re all really lucky that he wanted to go find you. You guys are a team, and you saved everyone once already. Finn’ll be okay.” He lets go and gives her a smile. “I’ll watch over him while you’re gone. I promise. Me and Beebee’ve got your back, and the medidroids have Finn’s.”

[I will double-check all calculations made by Twenty-One-Tee-Ex. I will requisition Friend-Finn orange blankets and administer soothing tones to Friend-Finn if he shows distress.] BB-8 adds from near their knees. [Friend-Poe and I will join your team. I am very good at cooperative objectives. I will not let you down!]

Rey smiles and ducks down to give Beebee a pat on the crown of its dome. BB-8 purrs and makes its burbling-click kissing noise.

“You ready?” Poe asks Rey.

Rey stands and considers him for a long moment, looking him up and down in his officer casuals, measuring the width of his shoulders and the height of him in the olive green jacket and black trousers. She pauses, looking at where he’s still scuffed and bruised at the temples and his lip from Hux’s men. Poe closes his hands casually into loose fists so she can’t see the blue-black under his nails from where they slowly slid in needles.

Rey steps up toward him and faster than Poe can process, she’s wrapped her arms around his shoulders and then let go again. Only a touch of warmth on his neck from where her mouth pressed, just the same height as he is, remains before Rey is moving down the hallway again and towards the yard.

[Come on, Friend-Poe!] BB-8 urges. [I wish to exchange farewells with Artoo-Detoo before Loud-Hair is within proximity. Loud-Hair is very frightening to me.]

Poe sets a hand on Beebee’s dome and lets it set the pace down the hallway after Rey. When the Falcon takes off, Poe waves with the crowd, but he doesn’t cheer or wave a cannon in the air like the rest of the pilots. He just watches that ship, once so familiar, until it disappears into the atmo with a gunshot crack as the thrusters take it into lightspeed.

* * *

While she’s off to save the galaxy, Rey crosses Poe’s mind fairly often. It makes sense; she’s on a secret mission for the Resistance, and it’s her very first (official) rebel flight. Poe’s been there. He hopes that she’s safe, that she finds Skywalker, that she has all the supplies she needs. He hopes that the Millennium Falcon is in as strong shape as the mechanics promised, and he has passing flights of deep jealousy that she gets to fly such a legend. Of course she crosses his mind.

When Poe visits Finn, he can’t help feeling like Rey isn’t far behind. Maybe it’s a Force thing. Poe sits at Finn’s bedside and shoots the shit, tells him about the other beings wandering through the medbay— _That’s Admiral Ackbar, you met him; he saved my parents’ butts during the assault on Endor_ and _Looks like the entire mechanics wing are hung over this morning, huh? They must throw a wild party down their way_. Of course, Finn doesn’t respond.

Poe has to wonder whether he would even if he were awake. Do stormtroopers gossip? It’s hard to imagine what kind of small-talk people might make on a First Order destroyer.

_I was going to do maintenance on the interrogation droid today, but then I thought, why bother? It’s supposed to hurt._

_Massacred a village of Force believers on some backwater desert planet. I got in some good hits, but Forcies, you know, it’s like hitting a baby with a blaster bolt. Oh, wait._

_Picked up a Resistance pilot today. Damn fool wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting his shuttle blown up, ha!_

The air around Poe’s temples seems to ripple whenever he has thoughts like these while sitting next to Finn; it reminds him that’s not fair, Finn was a stormtrooper and a good man. Maybe some of the other are—

But that’s a dangerous line of thought for the middle of a war. Poe doesn’t like being muddled. Doesn’t like shades of gray. He likes black and white and bright Resistance orange. If he’s worried about the other side being people, then he can’t take care of his own.

And he’s already lost too many this year.

Poe wakes early, before either of the D’Qar suns have risen, in a cold sweat about a week after Rey flew off in the Falcon. He lies in his bed, orange blankets rucked around his feet, and stares up at the ceiling. It shakes, just slightly, as some patrol goes rolling overhead. Poe shakes, just slightly, too.

[Friend-Poe?] BB-8’s dome swivels to consider him from its charging port in the corner. [Your pulse rate, temperature, and respiratory intake suggest that you are in distress. Are you okay?]

“Yeah, pal,” Poe mutters. He blinks at the packed-dirt ceiling. BB-8’s lights are comforting, a gentle pulse of white and red and blue. “Just a bad dream.”

[The number of bad dreams you experience has increased sharply since our respective returns from Designation: Jakku] BB-8 notes. [I find that my programming has regressed as well. Sometimes I worry about getting stuck in another trap-net.]

“Aw, bud.” Poe rolls onto his side at that. The mattress cover beneath him is damp with cooling sweat, and it feels rough and sticky against his skin. “I won’t let you get trapped in anyone’s net.”

[I know. But my sympathetic reaction emulator has been engaging at slighter provocation since Hero-Rey rescued me. Sometimes such things take a while to regain equilibrium, Friend-Poe.] BB-8 disengages from its charging port and rolls over to bump Poe’s bedside. [You will also regain equilibrium. You are the best pilot in the galaxy!]

Poe smiles at BB-8’s somehow-earnest little face. Its antenna wiggles from the vibrations through the floor. “Thanks, Beebee-Ate.”

[You’re welcome, Friend-Poe!]

Poe rests his hand on Beebee’s crown for a long minute while he yawns so wide his jaw clicks, his ear pops, his eyes water. He really hasn’t been sleeping well.

But he’s fine. The chronometer on the wall blinks 0323 at him, but the bed feels disgusting and Poe doesn’t want to lie back down. The mess doors will be locked, but there’s a caf percolator in the Pilots’ wing.

Poe swings his legs out of bed and shivers when his bare feet touch down on the cold floor. He shudders as he yawns again, deep, and stretches to crack all along the line of his spine and release tension in his shoulders and neck.

He needs to get back into his rehab workout. He’s been flying too tight.

Poe leaves his sleep pants in the middle of the floor, to an irritated beep from BB-8, and shuffles to the fresher. He lets the water run to warm up while he does his business, finds a clean towel, looks in the mirror.

He looks old.

He feels old.

The steam feels good on his sore muscles when Poe does step into the spray, but the pressure hurts when it hits the patches of skin still raw around his head and face from Hux’s men and their armored fists. He knows from experience at this point that soap hurts the inflamed nerves under his fingernails—but so does most everything. They’re almost numb now unless he forgets.

And then he uses his fingers wrong, too hard or too fast or too careless, and he remembers.

Poe washes slowly, waking up under the water. He gets a little shampoo in his eye and curses. He considers wanking, his cock half-hard and not entirely uninterested in the day, but it seems like too much _work_ , so he doesn’t. In the end he just rests his forearms on the fresher stall’s wall and his forehead on his arms, letting the rhythmic pulse of the water massage his back until it cools too much to be relaxing.

0419, according to the chronometer. That’s almost a human time to be awake. Poe towels his hair dry, then wipes fog away from the mirror to look at himself again.

Better. Not _as_ old. His eye is red from the shampoo, and he needs a shave, but now that he isn’t covered in a thick layer of dry night-sweat, he looks… normal. Like he’s fine.

He is fine. Poe runs water into the basin and lathers up his face.

“ _Kriff_.” The dulled blade nicks his cheek. Like he’s still a cadet. Poe keeps muttering curses as he wads up a bit of paper and sticks it to the red spot of blood, then sends the offending blade into the trash chute.

When Poe opens the cabinet to get out a new blade, a bit of brown leather falls out.

“Huh.” Poe takes it and stands up. “Hey, Beebee, buddy, c’mere!”

BB-8 rolls into the room and bips. [Do you need my help? You are bleeding!]

“No, I’m fine. What’s this?”

The droid makes an equivocating noise as he rolls closer to examine the leather strip. A bit of blue light washes over Poe’s hand as BB-8 takes some kind of measurement. [It belongs to Hero-Rey. For her hair. Should I place a communique to Artoo-Detoo?]

“No, I don’t think it’s that important,” Poe says, and has to laugh at the idea of going through channels to send Rey an encoded, classified message that he found her hair-tie. “We’ll just hold onto it for her until she gets back.”

BB-8 circles on its axis. [Hero-Rey is coming back, right?]

“Yes.” Poe ties the strip around his own wrist, then finishes changing the blade on his razor. The rest of his face clears smooth and easy as usual, the new durasteel singing-sharp. “She’s coming back.”

It’s a fair question, Poe thinks, as they finally start the trek towards the Pilots’ wing for a cup of caf and maybe, now that it’s nearly 0500, some company. Snap and Mirrial are usually awake early because of their little brood. It’s a fair question: so many of the friends that BB-8 has made over the years never returned after they flew off into the unknown. Ello. L’ulo. Han Solo.

Ben, once upon a time.

They turn the corner into the Pilots’ common room and BB-8 lets out a delighted whoop. It barrels forward at top speed, chirping.

“Hey!” Poe almost whoops himself. “You’re out of traction!”

Karé returns Poe’s hug with equal strength, her beautiful face pressed into his neck. She’s still wearing a medical boot on her left leg, but at least she’s out of the medbay and out of the hoverchair. She’s on the mend.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” Karé mutters into his skin. “I was so stupid.”

“Hey,” Poe says. “You got home. We’re lucky all you broke was your leg instead of your head.”

Karé pulls back and Poe can see that she’s been crying—a lot, and recently, and just seeing him is going to start her off again. Her eyes are swollen and as red as the one he burned with soap. Poe can count the number of times he’s seen her hair loose and unbrushed like this, hanging in a sheet nearly down to her knees, on one hand, and two of those were post-coital back in the Academy.

This is not that.

“I should have been there,” Karé repeats. “You were so outnumbered, and I could’ve—”

“Hey,” Poe says, and he pulls out a chair so she’ll sit. BB-8 clucks and circles around them twice before making its way to the percolator. “Don’t do that.”

“I just…” Karé buries her face in her hands. “I keep thinking that I could feel it. The moment he died. Like I’m some kind of fucking Jedi. Stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Poe says, and his stomach curdles. He doesn’t think caf is a good idea after all, even though it smells heavenly. “Maybe you did feel it. You don’t have to be a Jedi to have a connection with someone, and… that’s always been you and Iolo. How’s Bastian taking it?”

Karé purses her lips. “We had a fight. I’m—he’s so kriffing _young_ with this, Poe, he doesn’t _get it_. It’s like, he thinks it won’t happen again. Like it can’t be me next time, or him, or—that was his first real battle. It just…” she deflates. “It feels like we’ve fought a thousand already. Me and you. And Iolo.” She looks up at him with her swollen eyes. “And Muran.”

Poe swallows. BB-8 makes a lowing sound from beneath the table near their knees, a sound of mourning and concern.

They don’t talk about Muran.

“How do you do it?” Karé asks. She laces her fingers with Poe’s. “How did you get back in the cockpit, after—”

“Because it was the right thing to do.” Poe says. Short. Firm.

“I wasn’t even there.” Karé is awash in tears again. “At least you were there, when… but I was stuck here in a stupid traction bed because I can’t fucking fly.”

“You are an amazing pilot, and you know it. Everyone gets hurt at some point. And I’m glad you weren’t there,” Poe says. “I need you around. You and me… we’re the only ones left. Like, truly, Kun, it’s you and me. Our whole Academy class was on Hosnian.” He squeezes her hand. “You are the only person I have left who remembers—what it was like. In Rapier Squadron. What the four of us accomplished together.”

“The four of us,” Karé murmurs.

“The four of us,” Poe agrees. “So I’m gonna need you to stay around, alright, pal?” He draws Karé in close again and kisses the top of her head. Her hair is everywhere. “And no blaming yourself. There is nothing you could have done.”

“I could have had his back.”

“You did,” Poe says. “He knew that. You always had his back. You and Bastian both.”

Karé just groans. “Can I stay mad at Bastian for another day? He’s being a rancor ass.”

“That is one big, ugly ass,” Poe says. “Do I want to ask what he did?”

Karé’s lip curls. “No. Because he probably wasn’t being as big an ass as I feel like, and I want to stay mad and not have you go all reasonable-Poe on me.”

Poe snorts and smacks another kiss to the top of her head. “Come on, turn around. Let me braid your hair; there’s too much of it. I’m afraid it’s going to get caught in Beebee’s gyro again.”

[No, thank you!] BB-8 beeps. [Droids are not compatible with hair.]

“No, they are not,” Karé agrees, and she grunts as she resettles on the chair with her injured leg up on the table. “Beebee-Ate, remember that time we braided Poe’s hair?” When BB-8 beeps in the affirmative, Karé sniffs, smiles, and says, “Do you still have the holo-recording?”

The small blue figures of Poe and Karé and Iolo and Muran in an Academy dormitory on a planet that no longer exists shine and flicker over the tabletop in the underground D’Qar base common room. Poe keeps his fingers steady through Karé’s long, long hair, and he pretends not to notice that she’s still crying.

Bastian wanders out of the room that he shares with Karé and Iolo—only Karé now—long before Poe makes it down to the ends of the braid. He approaches Karé slowly, like she’s a skittish loth-cat, but they kiss like it’s been days and he’s finally forgiven. Poe claps Bastian on the shoulder as he stands to leave so that the other man can take his place and finish Karé’s first layer of elaborate Nabooian hairdo.

“You okay, man?” Poe asks, still holding Bastian’s upper arm.

“Considering,” Bastian says. “Seen Dr. Teksa twice already this week. I’ll be cleared to leave atmo soon, I reckon.”

“Good.” Poe squeezes his arm and gives him a smile. “Glad to hear it. You take care of this one, alright? Gotta heal that terra-lead foot.”

“Har har,” says Karé. “If we could just get a bacta shipment…”

Poe nods. If they get a bacta shipment, they can heal Finn, too. There’s never a lack of demand for bacta on the base. “I have a lead on a semi-legal shipment that isn’t attached to the First Order. Once everything’s back up and running, I’ll ask the General about seeing whether I can, uh, meet up with them.”

“Poe fancies himself a pirate,” Karé tells Bastian. “You let a man steal _one_ Senator’s yacht…”

Poe grins, flips her off, and whistles for BB-8 to follow him to the mess. Breakfast, and then Finn. And then he has to see the General anyway: it’s been 10 days since Starkiller Base, and that’s ten days for the First Order to regroup, too. Someone, somewhere, must know _something_.

* * *

Another week passes without any real news. No word of a new base being constructed, no whispers of a planet being terraformed and mined hollow to fill with a massive thermal oscillator. No sign of the carnage rent by the Knights of Ren.

No word from Rey or Chewbacca.

The ejector-strap bruises that cross Poe’s ribs fade from dark angry purple into a mottled, ugly green. The black blood under his fingernails does not fade, but there are healthy crescents starting to grow in underneath. Eventually, the evidence will be gone.

One by one, Poe’s pilots are cleared to leave atmo. They run drills, without any new battle plans; they patrol around the Ileenium System and the surrounding reach. There is only space dust and silence. Poe sings raucous Yavi victory songs over the commlinks until Snap and Jessika threaten to blast him with their laser cannons. Then he makes do with making up stories full of gaps for BB-8 to fill with the necessary nouns and verbs—in theory, it will help the droid’s algorithms better connect patterns. Really, it just makes Poe laugh.

“So, let’s see, where were we before Snap so rudely interrupted? Can you play back the story so far?”

[A long time ago in a GALACTIC SYSTEM far far away, there lived a very EFFICIENT Jedi named DESIGNATION: LUKE SKYWALKER. One ATMOSPHERICALLY STANDARD CONDITION afternoon, DESIGNATION: LUKE SKYWALKER was TEACHING LIGHTSABER FORMS to HERO-REY.] BB-8 recites. It pauses. [There is no data to suggest this story is factual, Friend-Poe. It is only my most logical supposition. I do not wish to give you inaccurate intel.]

“I know, bud! We’re just making up stories. It’s been boring up here lately. Gotta keep the brains active until we can have a real adventure, right?”

[I am ready for an adventure!] BB-8 agrees. [But I like flying with you even when there is no adventure, Friend-Poe. You have excellent yaw control.]

The line of atmosphere breaks across the S-foils, and Poe does, indeed, compensate on the P/R/Y so that the descent is smooth as blue butter. (Poe does, if nothing else in this universe, have excellent yaw control. Droids are not good liars.)

Jessika and Snap swoop down on either side of Black One and they crackle through the commlinks, droids beeping to one another to confirm oblateness calculations for landing, and then three X-wings are screeching to a halt down the runway. The smell of asphalt sparking fills Poe’s nose, and he’s home.

“Good flight, buddy!”

[Good flight, Friend-Poe!] BB-8 agrees, and it drops out of its hatch at the same time that Poe pops the canopy and climbs out of the cockpit.

General Organa is waiting for him, right there on the airfield, her arms crossed over her chest.

BB-8 makes a sound that is uncannily close to [uh-oh!] and it rolls away, weaving beneath ships on a roundabout route to the hangar and a hot oil bath in Parts Maintenance.

Poe narrows his eyes at the fleeing droid before turning to salute. “General Organa. System borders are all clear, no activity.”

“At ease, Commander,” says Leia. “Who went on your patrols today?”

“Lieutenant Pava, Captain Wexley, and myself,” Poe says. “General.”

“Oh, stop with the ‘general’ for this conversation, Poe. I know who Jessika and Snap are,” Leia says. Her arms stay crossed as she looks up at Poe. “You haven’t been cleared to leave atmo. But you did anyway.”

Poe swallows. “I saw Dr. Teksa two weeks ago. Got it out of the way straight off.”

“But you weren’t cleared,” Leia repeats. “You’ve been great about turning in Blue- and Red’s paperwork, so I know that you know that. I _should_ write you up, Poe. You’re a commanding officer. If you make a bad call up there—”

“I know,” Poe interrupts. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else. I’m not going to make a bad call.”

“I believe you,” Leia says. “I believe _in_ you. But I need you to get cleared before you set foot in that X-wing again, Dameron. You’re grounded until Dr. Teksa files your paperwork herself. I don’t even want you in the hangar.”

“General, how can I run drills if—“

“You can’t. Now that Kun’s out of the med bay, she can organize training and oversee drills until you’re cleared. Poe, I’m sorry. But it’s for your own good.”

“I know,” Poe says, and he does. He does know. “I don’t know why she didn’t just clear me. I’m fine.”

Leia blinks at him.

“I’m fine,” Poe repeats. “Really, I’m healing great and the conk on my head wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t even concussed. Just woozy, and that was finished by the time I got back from Jakku. And the rest of it… I’m good. I’ve lost people in my command before.”

“If you recall, I was there,” Leia says. “It’s what made you defect your previous post.”

“No,” Poe says, and it comes out more sharply than he intends—ever intended—to speak to Leia Organa. “I defected from the New Republic Navy because the commanders in chief were in bed with the First Order and their corruption prevented me from doing my job of protecting the galaxy from tyrants.”

Leia’s head tilts the other way, and she isn’t the General anymore—she’s his Tía Leia, Mamá’s beautiful sad friend, Ben’s mother, the smallest human adult that Poe knows, the one who sits up late at night at the Damerons’ kitchen table drinking caf with Mamá and laughing through her nose until the two women notice their small sons spying on them from the top of the stairs and invite them down to sit in their laps until they fall asleep.

“Poe.”

“I’ll get cleared,” Poe says softly. “But I’m fine. I promise. Don’t worry about me. You have—you don’t have to worry about me. You have your own shit. Sorry.”

“No skin off my ass,” Leia says, and she smirks. It doesn’t last long. “We _all_ have shit, Dameron, that’s what happens when there’s a war and you’re on the front lines. We’re all on this base because of our shit. That’s why I need everyone cleared.” She reaches out and squeezes Poe’s arm, the closest thing to a hug that she’ll give him while she’s his General and he’s her subordinate. There’s something lurking in the dark of her eyes and the corner of her mouth, like she wants to say something more to Poe, something about what _all their shit_ is, but instead she just rubs his bicep. “Go now. I told her to expect you before lunch.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Poe bobs his head. “Thank you for not writing me up, ma’am.”

“It won’t happen again, Commander,” Leia says with all of the finality that a lifetime of rule has imbued in her. “Go.”

Poe tucks his helmet under his arm, scrubs his hair off his forehead, and heads back inside the main building of the base. He doesn’t jog down the steps like he normally does, just walks the familiar path towards the med bay.

Dr. Teksa’s office is small and spare and set in a corner away from the drained bacta tank and all of the treatment beds. The flimsy white curtains around Finn’s treatment bed are pulled closed, the whirring and silhouettes of 2-1TX and Dr. Kalonia just barely visible.

No change, then: no panicked Code siren, but no movement from Finn’s bed, either.

He’ll wake up when Rey comes back. Poe can feel it in his bones. Like a bruise all its own.

Poe knocks on the doorframe even though Dr. Teksa’s door is open. She’s turned away from him, her lekku relaxed over her back as she reads a datapad. The pendulous chronometer that she uses instead of a digital ticks on her desk, passing second after second.

She raises her head and looks over her shoulder, the tip of her right lek lifting. “Hello, Commander Dameron. Come on in.”

Poe hesitates in the doorway before the door can finish sliding shut. “I don’t know if you want the door closed all the way. I just came in from Black One, so I probably stink.”

Dr. Teksa laughs as warmly as her high, glassy voice allows. “I have a window if it’s unbearable, but I can’t imagine that you smell that bad. Come on, take a seat. Would you like to choose a tea?”

“I’m alright,” Poe says, and he sits on the squashy sofa that takes up most of the wall immediately opposite Seku Teksa’s desk. “I had caf this morning.”

“I have Massassi-blossom, if you’re ever interested,” the psychologist says. She touches her own white mug with hot water from a kettle that she keeps bubbling away on a heated port near the window, surrounded by green plants that expel oxygen into the cramped office’s air. Poe can tell that she isn’t drinking the Yavinese tea, though; her cup isn’t filled with bright fuchsia-red, and the aroma doesn’t smell like home.

“Maybe,” Poe equivocates. “Thanks. Um, but I’m hoping not to be here too long. I just need you to sign my forms?”

“Ah,” says Dr. Teksa. She sits back in her chair and studies Poe’s face over the rim of her mug. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Commander.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not convinced that you’re fit for a return to active duty.” She takes a slow sip of the dark black tea. “Commander—”

“Poe. Just call me Poe, it’s shorter.”

“Poe. You came in less than a day after the tactical mission on Starkiller Base. You stayed for… maybe ten minutes. I would not be doing my job if I signed off on your clearance, because I don’t know whether you’re ready. I don’t know how you’re doing, Poe. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Working hard. Working good. Karé is out of traction, so we can start balancing the patrols between Black Squadron and Dagger-Stiletto again. It’s good. Things are good.”

“You know that you shouldn’t have been going on patrols,” Dr. Teksa says mildly. “That’s the whole point of needing clearance. Is that you need it before you do things like go out on patrols.”

Poe scratches his fingers through his sweat-stiff hair and hides his wince as the rough-bruised fingernails are snagged by the pressure. “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t think that it would matter that much since we didn’t leave the Ileenium System. General Organa already spoke with me.”

“Yes, I assumed so,” says Dr. Teksa. “I wouldn’t have expected to see you again so soon if she hadn’t.”

Poe opens his hands in supplication. “I just don’t want to waste your time. I’m good, and there are probably people here who need your office hours a lot more. The best thing that I can do is my job. Get out there, get in Black One, find the next Starkiller Base before they build it. Or go out and recruit some new pilots from the ranks who weren’t on Hosnian when—you know, there’s just a lot to do. And I’m ready to do it.”

Dr. Teksa sets down her tea and adjusts her eyeglasses. Her lekku move a little, a twitch up and then down again at the roots near her aurals. “You are not wasting my time by coming here and opening up and being honest, Poe. You’re right; everyone here has suffered at the hands of the First Order. But you’re included in ‘everyone.’ And your suffering counts.”

“I’m not _suffering_ ,” Poe says, and he means it: he’s not, comparatively. “But alright, if it’s what’s going to clear me, then… we can talk about whatever you think I’m not talking about. I don’t mind talking. I’m pretty good at it.”

He sits back on the sofa and crosses one ankle over his opposite knee, arms spread across the back of the cushions, and waits. Poe really doesn’t mind talking about his feelings—he does it all the time with BB-8, with his pilots, with Karé even though she isn’t part of his squadron anymore. He talks to Pops over holocall every week. Just once, very briefly, a few days after Rey and Chewbacca left to go retrieve Luke Skywalker, Poe had a soft conversation with Leia in the early-early morning hours before the mess doors opened, when they were both wandering the corridors with mugs of something hot between their palms.

He knows that Dr. Teksa wants to talk about what Kylo Ren did to him, just like Leia had put her cocoa-hot hand against Poe’s cheek and murmured apologies for _what he’d been through_.

If it will get him cleared to fly again, Poe will do it. But he doesn’t—

He’s fine.

The scent of her tea makes something in the back of his nose tickle like he might sneeze.

“So,” says Dr. Teksa. She folds her long-fingered gray hands together and smiles at Poe. “What have you been doing with yourself since you aren't cleared for missions?”

“Uh, just normal stuff, I guess. I mean, you already know I’ve been going up on patrols anyway, ‘cause we’re short-handed right now. And I guess I’ve been checking in with everybody, visiting Finn a lot, uh… I’m working on trying to code a longer-range geolocator for Beebee-Ate in case we get separated again. That’s taking some time.”

_Having nightmares. Wondering whether Finn is going to wake up. Flying in circles because there’s nowhere else to_ go _yet, nothing to_ do.

“What else…” Poe scratches his cheek. “I need to get back into the training center, but I guess I’ve been a little lazy with that. Maybe I’ll go this afternoon.”

Dr. Teksa raises her eyebrows. “You’ve been keeping very busy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe says.

“Have you always had a hard time being idle? No interest in hanging around the canteen, catching up on your reading, perhaps?”

“Uh,” says Poe, because he’s—not sure what the right answer is here. “I guess so. I don’t like being bored. And there’s a lot of work to do.” Poe swallows, and he considers Dr. Teksa at her desk, the way her pale eyes are both kind and dispassionate behind her thick-rimmed spectacles and how her smooth gray skin gives no indication of how old she might be or what she might have lived through to find her way to the Resistance.

But he knows that she was right, that everyone here has suffered, and most at the hands of the First Order directly. Everyone, now, after Starkiller.

So Poe shakes his head and takes a sip of the tea, still hot, and very peppery at the base of his tongue. “I’m not good at doing nothing. General Organa brought me here to do a job, and flying for her, for the Resistance, it’s how I can do the right thing in this universe. And it’s how I can honor my parents. And help people. People need _help_ , and I tried—I tried before, I told the New Republic chain of command, and they didn’t care. And now the New Republic doesn’t _exist_ anymore. So if I can’t do it, who’s going to? Somebody has to stop the First Order from… everything. Everything that they do is wrong.”

He didn’t mean to say all of that.

Dr. Teksa’s face hardly changes, but Poe knows—knows—that he is not going to get his form signed today. “That sounds like a lot of pressure to put on one man, protecting the whole galaxy.”

“Oh come on,” Poe says, and he tries a charming laugh. Those usually work. “You know I didn't mean _just me_ , I meant the Resistance as a whole. I’m in the command structure, but we’re all a team.”

That makes her smile. “That’s good, Poe. Really. But being a pilot is clearly an essential part of your identity.” She touches up her dark, dark tea with more hot water. This time, she stirs in a spoon of some thick, viscous amber sweetener from a glass jar that sits besides the chronometer on her desktop. She looks at Poe again with that same mild, inscrutable face. “Is that all you are? Who is Poe Dameron when he isn't being a pilot?"

_Shara Bey’s son. Kes Dameron’s son._ “I don't know, a nice guy? Does it matter when the whole point here is to get me back into my X-wing?” Poe takes a deep breath and opens his hands again. “I know it matters in the long run, but that's not why I'm here. I’m not, you know, having an identity crisis.”

“Poe, what would happen if you couldn't be a pilot?"

Everything inside of Poe twists. He didn’t think he’d fucked up _that_ badly. They still got the map, D’Qar still exists, half—half of the fleet are still alive and flying. He helped Finn to bring back a kriffing _Jedi_. He can’t get discharged. Not now.

_I don’t even want you in the hangar_ , Leia had said.

Poe’s fingers are numb. But he just swallows again, hard, so it hurts a little around the swell in his throat. He keeps his voice steady. “I guess I'd be a mechanic or work with the astromechs.”

“Good!” Dr. Teksa smiles at him with more teeth this time, and her lekku both curl outward in sincerity. “You can think about other options. That kind of flexibility is a good sign. So I take it you like working with your hands?”

Poe nods. “Yes. I’m good at it.”

“Had a chance to do that since you got back?”

“Well, I always like to do as much of Beebee-Ate's parts maintenance myself as I can. It gets kinda skittish if anyone else opens it up.” Poe scratches his jaw again before curling his black fingernails into his palms.

The Twi’lek’s eyes brighten at the mention of BB-8, which pleases Poe. Everyone should like BB-8. “So the two of you are very close, then?”

“Of course; Beebee's my partner. They're my little buddy.”

Dr. Teksa nods. “And what does Beebee-Ate say about how you've been since you got back?”

“I guess you'd have to ask Beebee-Ate.”

“So it hasn't talked to you about what happened?”

Poe squeezes his fist slowly, feeling the ache in his fingers, and then releases the hold to feel his own blood run hot back into the joints and the healthy space growing back under his dead nails. “Well, yeah, of course, but... I mean, it went through some things, too, so I mostly want to make sure it's okay.” He opens both hands to show her _everything’s fine! I’m good!_. “It thought I was dead for a while there, so. I'm just trying to make sure that it knows everything's fine.”

“That sounds very scary,” Dr. Teksa says. “I know the med-droids seem to think of the B-unit models as being very childlike. I’m glad it’s doing alright. Has it brought up any changes about you since you got back?”

_[The number of bad dreams you experience has increased sharply since our respective returns from Designation: Jakku.]_

"Yes,” Poe admits. “But you know how droids can be; I think they, you know, they don't understand that biosystems are different from programming, sometimes. Of course things have changed, but things change after any battle.” He shrugs, carefully careless.

“So it's expressed concern, then?”

Poe smiles, laughs again. “Beebee-Ate is generally concerned about everything. It's not quite Threepio, but it worries. We're working on it.” It’s easier to smile when he adds, “I've been doing these exercises with it that I read about on the holonet to increase its synthetic thinking? I make up a story and ask it to supply the nouns and the verbs, so that it has to think outside of the box.” His eyebrows draw together. “Figuratively. I'd never actually put my droid in a box.”

Dr. Teksa laughs at this, too, and Poe feels… better. He isn’t going to be discharged today, and maybe he can fix this enough to be cleared for flight. “I wouldn't dream of implying otherwise. You have a really unique connection with Beebee-Ate. What are these changes that have it so upset?”

“Well, you know. It went through its own ordeal, and it’s got a photographic memory. It’s just taking some time to process some things.” Poe grins, brilliantly, and when Dr. Teksa just keeps looking back, he sighs and scrubs his hands through his hair again—he has to avoid the sore lump still healing on the side of his head. “Yeah, fine, I… I’ve had a couple of bad dreams, and Beebee-Ate noticed. But it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m sure everyone’s been having some bad dreams, right?”

“Are you tired during the day?”

Pilots need to be alert. “Not too bad. There’s caf if I need a little pick-up. It’s not like I’m _not sleeping_.”

Dr. Teksa doesn’t look convinced. “How many hours do you think you’ve been getting a night, Poe?”

_Not enough, unless I work into exhaustion and just drop. That feels better._ “It depends, I guess.” Poe tries to read her face. “Maybe six? Sometimes eight?” he lies. “Sometimes—once or twice, I mean—it was less, but not… not more often than that.”

“But you're not having any trouble falling asleep, or getting back to sleep.”

“Ah, nope.” Poe scratches his chin and wishes he’d ever, ever developed a sabacc face. “Not, uh... nope.”

“I see,” says the doctor. She touches her cup with more hot water, steam rising in curls again around her face. She _is_ older than Poe had first thought, he thinks now; she looks—like everyone else on Base, like the number of years has mattered less than what filled them, in making her old.

She’s Twi’lek. Maybe she was in Hutt space.

“How are you eating?”

“What?” Poe starts a bit. Not because he’s tired. Not—not because he’s tired. “Oh. Fine. Same as ever. Snap made some kind of spicy noodle thing the other night in the Pilots' rec room that was good. It made my lips feel like burning for hours after, though.”

Dr. Teksa smiles. “I’m glad that you’re still associating with your pilots outside of official capacities. You seem like a tight-knit crew. Are you eating more than you used to?”

“Nah. Why, is that a thing that people do after they get kidnapped?”

_Shit._ He shouldn’t have said ‘kidnapped,’ he should have said… ‘taken prisoner by enemy combatants,’ or—‘briefly detained,’ he should have said ‘briefly detained.’ Shit, kriff, fuck.

Poe crosses his ankle over his knee to stop his leg from jittering.

“People respond to extreme situations differently. You might be surprised.” Dr. Teksa makes some notations on her datapad and Poe bites the inside of his cheek so that he doesn’t yell _not kidnapped! I didn’t mean that; I’m_ fine _, I was only briefly detained!_ “How about your sexual function?”

Poe chokes on nothing. “What?”

“Any trouble maintaining an erection or achieving orgasm?” Dr. Teksa doesn’t look anything but clinical.

“I—don't know! I haven't... there's not...” Poe shakes his head. “What does that have to do with flying?”

“Some people find that after trauma it's hard for them to get close to another person, or even think about being intimate. It's all relative to how you were before, of course.”

Poe’s jaw works once. “I know what people gossip about on Base. But… I don’t know, I guess I haven’t really had time to worry about having sex in the last—in a while. We’re at war. And there’s no one I’ve—no. No.”

“Poe, I don’t listen to what anyone gossips about,” Dr. Teksa says, and her lekku point straight downwards in sincerity. “If I cared more about what other people said about you than what you say, and think, about you, then I wouldn’t be very good at my job, would I? And I’m sorry if I insulted you. But Poe… you do seem agitated more than I’d expect.”

“Well, you kinda just sprung it on me out of nowhere!” Poe switches the cross of his legs. “I don’t know, I really don’t. I haven’t thought about anyone that way in a while.”

Not since coming to the Resistance.

Or—not since just before that, when a routine scouting mission blew Muran out of the sky. Out of Poe’s life.

Poe swallows.

Dr. Teksa’s eyes are kind. One of her lekku drapes around her shoulder in a gentle curl. “Could you see yourself becoming intimate with someone if you wanted to?”

“I mean.” Poe rubs his temples. “Yes? I guess? If there were someone I wanted to—but there's not. Right now. I'm not saying there never will be, just... there isn't.” This has nothing to do with getting clearance to fly, has nothing to do with his ability to make decisions for his squadron, has nothing to with Kyl—with _what happened_.

After all, at Takodana, Poe didn’t take a shot at the black-winged Upsilon-class, even though K—even with who was inside, because he saw that hulking monster take an unconscious hostage onboard. And he waited to set course back to D’Qar after the last bombing run until he saw all Resistance forces, the Millennium Falcon with Rey and Finn aboard, even though all he wanted was to get away from First Order space. He can still function, even around—

Why aren’t they talking about _that_? The fact that he’s fine? If he weren’t fine, then who knows where Rey and Finn would be now. He might have blasted Rey right out of the sky on that command shuttle, that’s what might have happened. And the thought of that… it makes Poe feel kind of sick.

“Are you alright, Poe?”

Poe looks up. _Damn. He drifted off again_. “Yes, sorry. Sorry, can I have some tea after all?”

She pours him a cup and Poe lets the steam warm his lips and nose before taking a sip. “I have just a few more questions for you, if you feel up to it.”

“And then you'll file my paperwork?”

“We'll have to see, Commander Dameron.” It’s a good thing Dr. Teksa is marking on her datapad, because otherwise she would see the terrible face Poe pulls at her. “So, you have a close relationship with your droid and all of the people under your command, which is an asset that I know leadership commend you for. Would I be right if I guessed that you concern yourself a good deal with their safety?”

Poe swallows the mouthful of tea. It’s too hot, and one of his back molars protests. “Yes. Of course. And yes, I feel... a lot of things about how many good people we lost on Starkiller. Is that wrong? I care about people. That doesn't feel wrong.”

“Absolutely. You'd be unable to do your job if you didn't care.”

“Okay! Good! So, then, I can do my job.”

“At the same time,” she says, _pointedly_ ignoring him, "your jobs are extremely dangerous. You often have to make split-second decisions that could potentially cost the lives of some or all of your squadmates, not to mention have an impact on the Resistance's success or failure in our mission.”

_Muran, eject!_ Poe’s eyes narrow. “I am very aware of that. It's not something I take lightly.” _I’m hit!—Iolo’s down!_ Even with the massive losses we incurred on Starkiller, my squadron has a high success record in completing mission objectives and a low rate of loss or even injury.” _Muran, eject!_ “I put more time into training my people than Commanders ever did back in the Navy.”

“Do you trust your people?” Dr. Teksa asks.

“With my life.” Poe shrugs. “But part of my position for the General is going in alone sometimes. That’s what happened on Jakku. It wasn’t about not _trusting_ anyone. She made it clear that if I got taken, then she couldn’t send my team after me. It’s not their fault.”

“Hmm.” Dr. Teksa stands at that, and she’s much taller than Poe expected, given how much her carriage is like tiny little Tía Leia’s. She faces the window that peeks over the corner of the office where the wall meets the ceiling, letting in what natural light there is to be had for an underground facility. Overhead, the sky is as clear as it was when Poe took Black One in for a landing. He’s itching to get back out there into the blue.

Poe is already mentally composing the answer to _so whose fault do you think it is?_ when she asks, “Do you ever find yourself worrying about them outside of training or missions?”

“I—yes, sure. They’re my friends, too. Like… I’m worried about Karé's foot healing if we can't get a bacta shipment, or... whatever. I’m worried about Finn. I’ve never seen a lightsaber wound before. I worry about my dad staying safe on civ land. Sure.” He pauses, measuring in his head. “But if you're asking whether I can sit down and watch a holonovela and know whether Chom is cheating on Tann with Poy or the other way around, yes, I can. It was the other way around on last week's _Amor en los Tiempos de la República Antigua_ , just so you know I'm telling the truth.”

“Poy can do _so_ much better! I still hope she gets back with Lonay,” exclaims Dr. Teksa, her left lek curling near her aural cone.

Poe grins and nods and, _yes, this was it, he’s figured it out. He can do this, and get cleared. And everything will be back to the way it used to be_. “Me, too. What’s the point of fiction if a Quarren and a Gungan can’t even make it work there?”

Dr. Teksa keeps smiling at him. But she taps the datapad again. “Do you feel like you know as much about your team’s lives as you do about your holonovelas?”

“Of course,” Poe says, and he’s a little offended. “More. They’re real, and I care about them.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you didn’t, Poe. But I do have to ask you whether it’s possible that you might focus on fantasy rather than deal with some real concerns.”

“No,” Poe says. “No, I don’t do that. I try to find balance. When I was growing up, I – ” Poe sighs, and he can’t help feeling like maybe she’s tricked him into bringing this up. _She’s good._ “I knew—people with the Force. And they talked a lot about the importance of balance. I don’t have the Force, but I still think balance sounds like a good idea. You gotta work hard to play hard, that’s the Pilot Wing motto.”

“Yes, I do recall seeing quite a large number of pilots wander through the med bay after parties, seeking hangover cures,” Dr. Teksa says, and Poe feels like the iron bands around his chest ease a little.

Maybe he won’t have to talk about what it was like to be tortured by the same phantom that killed his best friend. And Poe is an adult now, a grown man, a soldier; Ben was just a kid. They were all just kids, the padawans at Luke’s school, and Leia had been in the kitchen with Pops and Han making dinner and she’d just _collapsed_ and said _something is wrong; Han—Luke—_

“Of course, balance is difficult,” continues Dr. Teksa. Poe pinches his thigh to refocus his attention. “That’s why the Jedi train and have to practice. I think we all do, from time to time. Especially after a trauma.”

“I’m not _traumatized_. At least not any more than anyone else here. I’m fine.”

“You never find your mind racing with all the things that could happen, or feel like you can't stop thinking about something?”

That’s—

There’s a disconnect, in Poe’s head. Because of course he knows that it could happen again, _will_ happen again if he does his job right. He will confront Kyl— _him_ , he will be in a small space with _him_ —maybe not as small as that interrogation chamber, and hopefully not, but—and he will have to just… do better. He just has to do better. So of course he’s thinking about it, because he knows now what he didn’t do. What he couldn’t do, or didn’t think to do, or still needs to learn.

He should have run faster.

He shouldn’t have let that mask distract him.

He should finish coding the geolocator for BB-8 and he should add in a secure communications line to both R2-D2 and R4-C6. Then he wouldn’t need to worry about how it would get home again, if he needed to leave it…

But it’s not that Poe _can’t_ stop thinking about it, not like Dr. Teksa is suggesting. He just shouldn’t stop thinking about it, not until he’s sure that he won’t fail when it happens again. If. If it happens again.

Poe blinks twice. “Doesn't that happen to everyone sometimes?”

He buries his face in the mug of tea and drinks. His mouth is strangely dry.

Dr. Teksa taps on her datapad. “It depends. Do you have thoughts that interrupt what you're trying to focus on, that interfere with what you want to do?”

Flashbacks. Poe knows those intimately, has known them since before he had his own ( _Muran, eject! Muran, eject! Muran, eject!_ ) Mamá and Pops both had moments of sudden stillness and absent eyes, from the time that Poe was a tiny kid they rushed home to retrieve and bring to Yavin IV and make a home.

“I don't think so,” Poe says, because she must know that everyone—everyone—in the Resistance has intrusive thoughts and moments of gut-punching nauseous flashback and they’re just… a part of life, when you’re in a war. She must know about why Poe defected; Leia would have told her. She’s asking about—about— _Kylo Ren_ , not Muran. Poe doesn’t talk about Muran. “I haven't noticed that, anyway.”

One of Dr. Teksa’s lekku quivers, sweeping from her shoulder toward Poe. She tilts her head to the same side, and even though Poe doesn’t speak Ryl—doesn’t even have the necessary appendages to speak Ryl—he can tell that it’s supposed to be concerned. _Comforting_ , maybe. “What were you worried I might be referring to?”

“What do you mean? Nothing. Just thoughts that would keep me from—doing what I have to do, if I'm in the field.” Poe’s tea is gone, and his throat is drier than ever. He swallows around a lump. “Why? What were you referring to?”

“You tell me,” says Dr. Teksa, although not unkindly. “You seemed troubled when I asked that question.”

“I'm fine.”

“No recurring thoughts you can't stop thinking about?”

_General Organa is worried about what he told the First Order, or that—that somehow they_ got to him _and he’s feeding them things still. That somehow_ Kylo Ren _is still in his brain, that he got damaged somehow, irreparably, that he’s lost his mind._

Poe’s jaw clenches. “My _thoughts_ are fine. I'm _fine_.”

Dr. Teksa looks sad behind her spectacles as she stands to refill the kettle and, when it steams seconds later, crosses the room to refill Poe’s cup. She sits down in a different chair, one not behind her desk, and she’s so much closer this way.

Poe looks out the thin window behind her desk, at the clear blue slice shining down on the underground base. He’s gotta get back out there, into that sky.

“Oh, Poe,” she sighs. “We were doing so well there.” She waits until Poe looks away from the window and back to her. “You realize that if you tell me about these thoughts, I might be able to help, right? Even if they don't necessarily get in the way of you doing your job.”

Poe holds the cup in both hands and lets the warmth ground him. He swallows before he meets Dr. Teksa’s eyes, but he does, and he holds her gaze steadily. He can do this. He can do his job. He has to do his job. “There's nothing to say. Compared to what a lot of other people here have had happen to them… I have nothing to complain about. I'm fine. I'm healing up, and I have Beebee-Ate to talk to, and Jessika and Karé and I—“ he very nearly says _Iolo_ , but he doesn’t have him anymore, and he bites the word off with his teeth for a quick save—“I'm good.”

The lek does that shift again, sweeping from Dr. Teksa’s shoulder towards Poe, the tip curling slightly. “Why does something have to be worse than what someone else is going through in order for it to merit help?”

She pauses like she’s expecting Poe to answer.

But he can’t.

“We're not in a triage situation,” she continues. “I don't have to compare your needs to that of any other patient. This time is yours, to make use of however you need it.”

Poe rubs his eyes with the heel of one hand, still hot from the mug of tea. He’s so tired. He’s more than tired: Poe is exhausted, down to the bones, down to the meat-marrow insides of his bones. He’s been tired ever since Kylo Ren ripped apart all the neurons of his brain and made them misfire, made all of his blood vessels too big and too small and the nerves all set aflame and he just… wants to sleep. And to fly.

“I just need to get cleared. I totally respect what you do, and I will come back if you want, however often you think I need to, but I just need to be able to work. Being useful makes me feel better. I don't want to let General Organa down, or my people, or... that's all I really want right now.”

Dr. Teksa leans back just enough that Poe catches sight of himself in the reflection of her glasses. The bags under his eyes look like bruises. Maybe they are; he’s stopped trying to look at his face in the mornings, not until all of the marks from the IT-0 torture droid fade away.

“Hmm. A compromise, then,” offers Dr. Teksa. She picks up her datapad again. “I'll clear you for duty… On the condition that you come back and see me every week, no exceptions. That means no extended missions until I think you’re ready. Also, I'd like your permission to consult with Beebee-Ate regarding your sleep schedule, for my records.”

“Fine! Yes, that's fine.” It’s better than nothing. And just for finding bacta—if Poe needs more than a week per recon flight, he’s looking in the wrong places. A week is fine, for now. It’s time to get his shit in gear and be perfect for her next week, and she’ll sign off on extended flights, and this will all be over. It will all be behind him. Poe gives her a grin, and his little reflected self looks better already. “And you'll see, if I'm busy, if I'm with my people, I'm good. I'll be great. I'm fine, already, but I'll be even more fine.”

Dr. Teksa smiles back, but it isn’t as wild as the little Poe reflected in her specs. “Okay. Then I’ll turn in your forms to General Organa this afternoon, but Poe? You’re still banned from the hangar until she’s reviewed them with the Admiral and filed them. So you have this afternoon and evening to yourself, and I want you to use them _for_ yourself.”

“Okay,” says Poe, nodding. Anything. “I get it. Really. Thank you. Really.”

He stands to leave, and stands to shake his hand before heading back to her desk. “I’ll see you next Centaxday.”

Poe already has one foot out the door when he turns to give her a, perhaps flippant, little salute.

An afternoon to himself. It’s been months since Poe had ‘an afternoon to himself’ that he couldn’t spend modifying Black One or helping the mechanics repair the new salvage ships or coaching rookies on drills that they’re still running slow. But he can’t work in the hangar.

It’s a Centaxday; some of Dagger Squadron have a running game of Galactic Expansion on Centaxdays—

But Dagger just lost their commander. No one is going to be playing a game today.

Poe’s head pounds behind his left eye. _Everything_ hurts; his ribs, his head, his fingers, his heart. Everything is bruised and aches inside him.

Maybe he’ll just… try to sleep.

Forty-five minutes later, Poe sits up in his bed and groans, elbows on his knees, as he tears at his hair in frustration. It’s been days since he really slept—he knows, he knows, and when Dr. Teksa requests BB-8’s data, she’ll know, too, and then so will Leia—but he _just can’t sleep_. Whenever he closes his eyes, his mind drifts, but it feels wrong. It’s like his thoughts are trying to change hyperlanes on Coruscant and he keeps missing the right exits, ending up too fast on lower levels he didn’t want to find. They’re too dark, and Poe doesn’t want to find out who’s lurking in the shadows, just waiting to jump out from the skyway alleys with a sparking red ‘saber to—

_No._ Fuck this bantha shit. Poe stands and shuffles into the ridiculous knitted slippers that Jessika gave him for Life Day last year. He rubs the back of his neck, stops for a piss, and grumbles his way through the corridors to the Pilots’ Wing.

“Poe!” Mirrial Wexley looks surprised to see him—and why wouldn’t she; he’s in his pajamas in the middle of the day—when she opens the door to the Wexley family’s triple. “I haven’t seen you much since you got back. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,” Poe says, and he smiles at her. She’s tiny and green-skinned and lovely. “Um, but I was wondering…” He blows out a long breath and lowers his voice, leaning closer to her. “Does Snap still have any of those Gabazol tablets?”

Mirrial’s mouth twitches to the side as she looks up at Poe, but she doesn’t ask why he wants the no-go pills. She’s married to a pilot, hangs out with the pilots, lives on a Resistance base—she knows better than to ask why Poe can’t sleep. So she nods and opens the door a little wider and says, “I think so, somewhere. Come on in and I’ll dig them up.”

“Thanks, Mir.” Poe shuffles into their big quarters and nods hello to the half-fixed B1 that Snap has racked up on the repair table in the main room. It beeps some nonsense in return.

“Ignore Bones Four,” says Mirrial. “Temmin hasn’t bothered to program in a language protocol yet. He’s trying to get the motor systems running first. Anyway, have a seat, I’ll go look in the med cabinet.”

Poe takes a seat on one of the squashy chairs in the main room and rests his head in his hands again. He yawns deeply.

“Uncle Poe!” Small hands land on Poe’s knees. “You okay?”

Poe looks up and Leilu Wexley’s small face is barely two inches away from his, her eyebrows lowered in concern over her wide eyes. There’s a smudge of bright yellow something on her nose, and she’s wearing a fuzzy one-piece pajama set that makes her look just like an ewok, down to the feet. Poe has known her since the day she was born; he was one of the first people to hold her, besides Mirrial and Snap and half of her namesake, General Organa.

Poe smiles at Leilu and it’s genuine. “Yes, I’m okay, estrellita.” He sits up and holds out his arms so that Leilu can settle into his lap. “How are you?”

“I did painting,” Leilu reports. “On Daddy’s ship. Uncle Poe, you got hurt!” She points to the scabbed over rough patch on Poe’s temple where the interrogation droid’s electroshock probe suckered into his skin and yanked out a chunk of hair when he didn’t relent.

“I did,” Poe agrees. “I did get a little hurt. But I’m okay.”

“I can fix it,” Leilu offers, and she squirms up in his lap so that she can see the scab. “I make you all better.”

“Okay,” Poe says gamely.

Leilu stares at the patch of dried blood and new skin for a long moment, her face very impassive, then closes her eyes and gives Poe’s temple a little kiss. “There!” She grins brightly at him. “Daddy says my kisses make it all better.”

Poe smiles at her. Impossibly, amazingly, his head does hurt less. It must be the placebo effect. “Thank you very much, Dr. Wexley.”

“I’m not doctor!” She giggles as Poe tickles her tummy. Then her face goes sad again. “I think you are still hurt.” She touches the small cut below his right eye. It’s going to scar, Poe knows. “Your lights are sad.”

“They are, huh?” Poe asks, smiling at her. Leilu started talking about imaginary friends and people’s ‘lights’ a few months back, and in all of her drawings of Poe, he was surrounded by scribbles of green and silver. “I’m not sad. I’m just sleepy.”

Leilu’s small lips purse, but she doesn’t accuse him of lying. Mirrial walks back into the room with a small orange canister in her hand.

“I see you found the master painter,” she says, and smiles at Poe. “I didn’t notice that she had that on her nose; Leilu, come here, let me wipe your face.”

Leilu flops onto the floor, groaning, but she does let Mirrial swipe at her nose. “I made Uncle Poe better.”

“You did?” Mirrial kisses Leilu’s forehead. “That was very nice of you.” She shifts Leilu up onto her hip and smiles at Poe. “I know it’s just folk superstition, but Temmin swears she really is a healer when she kisses him hello after missions.” She holds out the canister. “Take what you’d like. There aren’t many left.”

“Thanks, Mir,” Poe says, and he takes the container of round white caplets. “I probably just need the one, but I’ll—I’ll let you or Snap know tomorrow, okay?”

Mirrial nods, but Leilu’s eyes light up and she claps. “Uncle Poe! Tomorrow, I play Beebee-Ate?”

“Sure,” Poe says. “I’ll bring Beebee-Ate when I come by tomorrow. I know they’ve missed seeing you.”

Leilu nods solemnly in her ewok pajamas. “Me and Beebee-Ate are best friends. I teach Beebee-Ate good games.”

Mirrial smooths down Leilu’s dark static-flyaway hair and gives her a calming kiss on the forehead. “You’re very good with droids. But it’s naptime now for you, so tell Uncle Poe bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye, Uncle Poe,” Leilu parrots. “Feel better.”

Poe nods at them both. He pockets the canister of sleeping pills for the trek back to the Officers’ wing and his own bed. “Thanks, Wexleys.”

When Poe gets back to his own quarters, he heads into the fresher for a tumbler of water to make the Gabazol go down easy. He stares at himself in the mirror above the sink basin as he swallows the chalky white tablet. He yawns again, watching his own back teeth, and then frowns and leans closer to the mirror.

When he turns his head and gingerly pets down his dark hair, the scabbing on his temple looks… almost gone. It looks better than it did just hours ago, when he woke up in a cold sweat again, heart pounding, fingertips pulsing with hot-cold pain after he’d snagged them in the sheets as he clawed and clawed against the weight of burning sand in a Jakku sinkhole where he lay trapped at the bottom entombed in the wreckage of a village in flames.

Huh.

He yawns again and the world sways a little, so Poe slips off the knitted boots and crawls back into his bed. He flops down on his stomach, this time, his arms splayed out until his hands hang off the sides of his narrow bunk. His neck is wrenched at an awkward angle so that he doesn’t suffocate himself on his pillow, but it’ll do. The sedative in his veins lulls him to sleep.

_The air on Yavin 4 is softer than the air on D’Qar. The oxygen is more natural, and it feels sweet as Poe fills his lungs. The gravity here feels better on his bones; it feels like_ home _._

_The ground is soft and spongy with moss; the bright wing of a whisper-bird brushes Poe’s cheek. Through the cover of ferns and vines, a woollamander’s yellow saucer eyes peek at Poe in some deep cosmic understanding, a look that speaks _we are both of this place, and you are home_ into Poe’s bones. He knows the spade shapes of those leaves like he knows the backs of his hands. Like he knows how to fly Black One. Like breathing._

_The Yavinese forest is resplendent with the smell of heady flowers and rich soil warmed by the thick ozone of the gas giant. A towering blue-barked curling trunk reaches up to that striped red sky above Poe, and it smells sweet and tangy when he passes: Poe stops and touches the bark, peels a strip back like Pops showed him when he was only just old enough to walk on the uneven forest floor. Thick, sticky sap bubbles out of the empty space, and Poe scoops some onto his thumb and forefinger._

_It tastes like flying with Mamá, sweet enough to hurt his grown-up mouth a little bit—feels it in his teeth—but his favorite thing as a child. The sap hardens in the relative cool of Poe’s body temperature, and he chews at it like candy._

_He can’t get this on Base. Couldn’t at the Academy, either. These trees grow nowhere else in the Galaxy._

_The sky crackles overhead. A burst of electricity draws shapes between the heavy purple clouds beginning to blot out the sky. Rain season. Not flying weather._

_The first drops to fall are warm and soft, big enough to splash against Poe’s outstretched hands. The moss beneath his feet engorges with mud, slick and slippery._

_Poe keeps walking._

_The forest around him goes to sleep with the falling rain. The birds roost in low branches, tending to their nests. Woollamanders and runyips rustle the shrubbery as they burrow in warm, knotted dens. The broad faces of bright flowers curl into themselves like they’re returning to bud._

_Poe’s feet slip-slide in the wet soil. He tangles in moss and underbrush. Yavin 4 is trying to keep him at home._

_His mouth is numb with sweetness as he breaks through the forest’s edge and onto the Dameron compound. The landing pad is empty: no RZ-1 A-wing, no Millennium Falcon, no Black One. Poe unlatches the fence gate and steps onto his own land._

_Poe walks the familiar path between the landing pad and his parents’ house, high on wooden stilts like all of the houses on this quadrant of the jungle moon, so that the flooding rains of spring and autumn just barely lap at the floorboards, and the runyips can’t chew through the foundations with their funny blunt teeth. The rain is already beginning to gather on the ground. Poe’s feet are submerged to his ankles in warm, wet mud._

_He keeps walking. There’s a light hanging between the looping branches of the Force tree, flickering gently in the gusting wind. It’s the size of Poe’s fist, and brighter than the supernova of a planet imploding. Even from here, Poe can feel its warmth. His eyes are blurred with wet._

_Poe has to shield his eyes against the brightness hiding in the branches of the Force tree when he gets close._

_Through the sheets of rain, the world smudges, but Poe recognizes the shape that bright, beautiful light takes, even behind the water and the slats of his fingers._

_“Muran,” he whispers._

_Muran unfolds from his perch on a low, wide branch and jumps to the ground, the water and mud and the fallen leaves of the Force tree rippling out from the splash. If anything, the glow brightens still further when he smiles. “Hi, Poe.”_

_Poe’s eyes are greedy as he takes in every morsel of Muran’s face, his sharp cheekbones and straight nose, the way his chin and his cheeks and his clean-shaven dark skin all seem designed to draw Poe’s eyes right to Muran’s lips. It’s all there, his whole face is there, Muran is_ here _._

_“I’ve missed you,” Poe says, and his voice cracks around the lump in his throat, his heart beating fast in his throat. The ground is warm and wet, swishing around his calves, as he steps forward, reaches out. The silver-gold glow around Muran pulses with the beat of Poe’s every inhale, exhale. The stars match the rhythm overhead in the swirling red-violet clouds of the borealis flaring in the code of the universe as the leaves of the Force tree behind Muran breathe, quivering._

_“I know,” says Muran, and he doesn’t come closer as the water starts to lap at their knees. He’s still in his Naval uniform. The Lieutenant lines on his chest shine proudly, just like they did when—_

_“You died.” Poe has to fight the water, now, for every step. “I watched you die.”_

_“I’m sorry, Commander.” Muran declines his head. The water runs down in shining rivulets._

_The water laps at Poe’s waist as finally, finally, finally he reaches Muran. The tree roots glow beneath the dark water of the flashflood and make a tangled knot of light all around them, anchoring the tree—the Force—into the world. Poe reaches up to cup Muran’s cheek and he’s surprised that he’s_ real _, that there is warm flesh under his hand. It aches, hot and cold and pained and relieved all at once, in Poe’s chest._

_“Don’t. Don’t be sorry.”_

_Muran covers Poe’s fingers with his own. Just like he used to, just like he did when he was alive. “I’ve never wanted to make you sad. Do you know what I was thinking, in that moment?”_

_Poe starts to shake his head,_ please don’t tell me-- __

_“I was thinking about how much I hoped you’d get the bastards,” Muran says. He looks up at Poe again, right in the eye. His sloping black eyes are as fierce and beautiful and liquid as ever, fathomless as the Maw of the Kessel Run, and Poe is just as subject to their gravity. “And I was thinking about how glad I was it wasn’t you.”_

_“Don’t,” Poe whispers again. “I don’t want to think about that. Not while you’re here.”_

_The rain roars around them and the glow of the root-anchor flares and recedes, the living Force taking and giving back. Poe: alive. Muran: dead._

_“What do you want, then?” Muran asks, and he trails his fingertips over the inside of Poe’s wrist. He used to count Poe’s pulse sometimes late at night, reaching across the chasm between their dormitory beds, to ease his fear of the dark and the silence. Poe hopes that is not what it’s like wherever Muran really is, now._

_Poe shakes his head and the water drip-drops out of his curls and down his nose and cheeks. “I still just want you.”_

_Muran’s plush lips are soft and warm as life when he touches them to Poe’s cold mouth in the rain, in the shadow of the Force tree, water and light all around them in a whirl of summer storm. Poe is ravenous as he reaches up to cup Muran’s face in his hands. To hold him close. To _keep him while he can_._

_Poe has dreamt of Muran more times in his life than he can count, and that didn’t stop after –_

_After._

_But this feels different, in the hollow around Poe’s heart. This is not just a dream; it can’t be, because Poe knows that he’s started to _forget_. Forget the shapes of Muran’s teeth, the chips and ridges sharp under his tongue when Poe counts them. Forget the sound of Muran’s breath catching in his nose when Poe’s fingernails rake over the nape of his neck. Forget the raised, smooth line of a scar that crossed the bottom of Muran’s chin._

_Poe never asked where he got it. But it had always been there._

_This Muran has all of those things, has weight and heat to him as Poe leans into his gravity and drags his hands from his neck down over his shoulders. There is no heartbeat thumping in his broad chest when Poe spans it with his hands, and Poe tries to stifle his sob into Muran’s adam’s apple. Even in a dream, or this – this place – he can’t have Muran alive._

_“It’s okay,” Muran murmurs into the top of Poe’s head. “You’re alright.”_

_“No,” Poe whispers against the warm, familiar, dark skin being exposed button by button as he opens Muran’s shirt. “No, not without you, I’m not.”_

_“You are,” Muran promises. He shivers as Poe tongues one of his nipples into a point. “Poe, you’re going to be fine. Wonderful, even.”_

_Poe scrapes the prickliest part of his scruffy jaw against Muran’s chest and looks up at him through his lashes. “I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk at all. I just – ” He tears open the rest of Muran’s shirt, buttons disappearing into the water with soft splashes. “I don’t want to talk anymore, I want to feel.”_

_In life, Muran knew Poe's body better than Poe knew his own—at least, by the end. Muran had been Poe's first, once upon a time, and Poe was Muran's last, even though there were others for each of them, in between. Years wasted, Poe thinks, while his head figured out what his heart already knew: he was in love, he was loved. He and Muran always spiraled back to each other, and he knew they were both bringing knowledge they'd learned in someone else's bed, but it never mattered._

_It doesn't matter now that Muran's heartbeat is gone under Poe's lips, even in a dream. It _is_ a dream, even though it feels so warm and muzzy and rough-palm real. Muran may not have a heartbeat even in Poe's imagination, but he does have a body, and that – Poe knows that isn't true. Muran vaporized, became part of space. By now, even the molecules of his last breaths have probably drifted into the Maw with the ghosts of Alderaan and Scarif and the Jedi. _

_Muran doesn't speak again as Poe holds his breath and kisses his way down Muran's front, the water closing over his head. The world is silent under the surface._

_Poe's eyes sting when he opens them._

_He pulls the bottom half of Muran's flightsuit off with as little finesse as the top half, and the water doesn't fight him. Muran always wore everything to perfect regulation, but he isn't wearing anything under the heavy material now. Poe curls his fingers into the gap of the flightsuit to fist Muran's cock, and Muran is still warm here. Rough-palmed hands card through Poe's hair to hold it away from his face._

_Poe has to surface, to fill his lungs with air, to _breathe_._

_Muran doesn't. Even as Poe pulls him closer and starts to work his hand over his cock, even as Muran groans under his breath—the same bitten-off quiet-in-the-barracks moan that always made Poe laugh—his chest doesn't expand. Poe nips at his throat, looking down through the shiver of the water at his hand on Muran's body. Somehow, he can't quite look at his face._

_The water glows as the flood climbs up the familiar, knotted trunk of the Force tree. Poe watches as the silhouette of his own hand works over Muran's cock beneath the surface, swelling and ebbing with the movement of his arm and the rush of constant rainfall joining to the flood, building, building, growing. Everything is blue and black and wet and warm and Poe buries his face in the side of Muran's neck. When he bites down, Muran's skin tastes like the remnants of the manilkara sap: too sweet for Poe's teeth now. He isn't the man he used to be._

_Poe slides his other hand around Muran's ribs, the empty cage where his heart had beaten steadily under Poe's cheek so many nights, and traces loops down his spine until he can push the flight suit the rest of the way off Muran's hips and legs. He tucks his fingers around the curve of Muran's ass and slides callused fingertips through the crease. His fingertip presses inside Muran more easily than it ever had in life, and Poe is greedy-urgent, adds another and then a third in a way that would be toomuchtoofast if Muran—if Muran were real._

_He curls his fingers. Keeps his eyes closed._

_The water buoys them towards the tree, when Muran gives a tiny crackle of a groan and Poe's hand slips free. Poe's clothes disappear, floating away or sinking or vaporizing into the space of the dream, before he curls himself over Muran's back. Water runs off the branches and leaves into Poe's hair. Into his closed eyes. It courses down his cheeks._

_Muran is hot as life inside. Poe's feet sink into the rich mud at the base of the Force tree as he steadies, finds purchase, tries to hold Muran closer. "Thank you."_

_The leaves whisper all around them as Poe moves. Heat builds in his belly and low-curling through his groin with every beat their skin meets, and the voices in the whisper of the tree grow to meet it: they crescendo by the uncountable thousands, like the raindrops still roaring through the sky, louder and louder, and Poe thinks he can catch a word or a familiar tone and then it's gone again, blending into the cacophony of_ feeling _._

_Poe tries to turn Muran's cheek enough that he can nudge their noses together. Their lips. The kiss connects more easily than Poe remembered._

_He groans desperately as his teeth scrape down Muran's tongue, slick and hot before he sucks it into his mouth, the kiss ragged and sloppy as he climbs higher and higher towards coming. The wash of the floodrains pulls at Poe's skin with the same rhythm as the clench and release of Muran's tight slickness pulls at Poe's cock, even as the water now laps around their shoulders, ripples up to soothe the new mouth-shaped bruises on Poe's neck._

_He pulls back to breathe and instead warm water fills his mouth, splashes over his lower lip and floods his tongue. It tastes like Yavinese rain, like catching rolling drops from the long spines of jakaw fronds in his cupped hands to slurp out of his own dirty palms, like the smell of sleeping with the windows open in his childhood bedroom. Somehow, he doesn't choke on the water sliding down his throat, filling up his chest. It's part of him, he's part of it, Muran part of them both, those cells, those molecules filling everything like Poe is the Maw._

_Poe surfaces when a hand rakes through his hair, like he's being pulled bodily back out of the void and into Yavin's soft air. He gulps, lips raw, eyes streaming._

_Teeth nip at his swollen lip. Soft tongue follows, apologizes without words. Poe whimpers and buries his face in a long neck, a shoulder right –_

_Right at the level of his own._

_Muran was taller, a full head taller._

_"Poe Dameron," whispers through the leaves of the tree, through the rain, through space. He feels it more than hears it, but that's him, and it floods through him like a reminder that_ he's alive _and everything is hot and wet and smooth and he isn't alone here and it feels so_ good _._

_He lifts his head. Opens his eyes._

_Rey is staring back at him when the flood closes over their heads and the whole Galaxy goes over blue-white and hot come._

Poe blinks up at the ceiling, burning all alone in his bed under the fresh sheets. That hasn’t happened to him in _years_. He sits up and rubs his face, thumbing out the thick crusts from his eyelashes before grunting in displeasure at the cold, sticky wetness on his thighs and belly. _Must be a side effect of the pill._

Could be worse, really, as far as side effects go. He stumbles out of bed and back to the fresher again to wash up, and it's disconcerting how much better he feels compared to this morning. The water isn't as hot, but that doesn't matter. He kicks his sticky pants and underwear into the laundry chute with the damp towels before heading back to his bedroom to change the sheets.

As he smooths down the corner of his sheet into a sharp fold, the scrap of material around his wrist draws his eye.

Rey.

Why had she been in the dream? Muran, he had loved—still loved—so, so much, of course his brain would find Muran somewhere in its recesses when he finally let himself _sleep_ again. But Rey? He barely knows her, and she's much too young. And she's not for him; she barely knows him, either, and doesn't trust him or even remember his name, probably, at this point. 

There is no good reason that she should have shown up in his head. Something like anger flares in the base of Poe's gut because _she took away his time with Muran_ , but he shakes his head like that will clear it. That's ridiculous. 

It was just a dream.

Rey would never have _chosen_ to be—naked like that, around him, naked in his arms, on his cock, all around him. She probably loves Finn the way Poe loved Muran— _still loves Muran_ , he corrects himself; it's only been a Standard. And Finn loves her enough to risk the Galaxy to keep her safe.

Poe stands and heads to the footlocker for a clean set of casuals.

* * *

“Hey, buddy,” Poe says, and he settles into the chair at Finn’s bedside.

Finn does not react.

“You’re looking scruffy, pal. Maybe if Tee-Ex says that it’s okay, I’ll bring in my razor and give you a shave so you look tops when Rey gets back. I’m hoping it’ll be soon. I bet she misses you as much as you miss her.” Poe gives the unconscious man a hollow, tired smile. “I miss you both. But you’re right here, Finn. You’re right in front of me. Think you could open your eyes and give me some company?”

Nothing changes, although Poe didn’t really expect for anything to happen. Finn is so still, except for the rise and fall of his chest. It’s hard to believe that he isn’t just sleeping. 

“This one time,” Poe starts, and pauses. His thumb finds his mouth and he bites at the nail without thinking, without _remembering_ how black and bruised it is underneath and the pain when he pulls with his teeth makes him hiss. “This one time back in the Navy I got knocked out bad on a mission. My X-wing got hit by some shrapnel and went into a spin, and I crashed into an asteroid. I was able to eject, Beebee too, we were both fine, but. Then the X-wing blew and I got kinda crushed under one of the S-foils. Total bacta immersion. Uh, I’m working on following a lead to get you some of that stuff, bud. You’re gonna get better.

“But uh, so I was on this asteroid and I was stuck under a chunk of burning X-wing, and Beebee contacted out to my squadron for help. But it was a solo patrol, so help was a few parsecs away. I was a real mess by the time they pulled me out. So even after the bacta, I was in an induced coma for a while. I’ve been where you are, Finn. So—I think you can hear me. And I am pretty sure that you’re in there, and you’re thinking things over, and you’re taking some time for yourself. That’s what I did.

“And um,” Poe wipes at his lip again, but doesn’t make the mistake of biting, “when I woke up, my whole squadron was sitting at my bedside. Karé Kun, she’s still here, and you’re gonna love her; she’s a real bruiser like Rey. She was a handmaiden on Naboo before the Academy, and I don’t know what Stormtroopers learn about bare-hand defense, but Karé’s gonna kick your ass. So, her. And uh… Iolo Arana. He died at Starkiller. He was a good man; really funny. Just… he made Karé wet her pants laughing once; he did these impressions of everybody, and _man_ , I wish you could have seen his Admiral Ackbar. I miss him, Finn. We’re gonna get all these new recruits, and… he just made everybody feel so comfortable right away, ‘cause he could make ‘em laugh.

“But uh, sitting right—sitting right where I’m leaving an empty chair for Rey, your right-hand girl, you know, was—” Poe swallows and looks down at Finn’s still face. The droids have been taking care of him, besides the scruff. Poe swallows again. “Anyway. The last person on my squadron—Rapier Squadron, it was called; I don’t think I said—Muran. Muran.”

Poe adjusts the blanket that covers Finn up to the chest. “He was the best. I met him right on the first day of the Academy. I was just this scrawny twelve-year-old, and I wanted to be a pilot so bad and I kinda thought I was already hot shit ‘cause I could fly an A-wing, right? But I was also really scared. And I’d never been away from Yavin IV. And I got so, so lost trying to find the mess hall by myself because I told my bunkie that I could handle it.

“So I’m wandering the corridors of the Academy on Hosnian, right, and that whole planet is—was—a maze. And I’m convinced that I’m just gonna be walking around in these duracrete hallways forever, trying to find some bad mashed tubers and mystery meat… and I just started sobbing. I wanted to go home. I could fly civilian corps without the Academy, and I just wanted to be where I knew where I was.

Poe presses his lips together, sniffs deep, and does not cry. He blinks. And blinks again. “Then this kid runs up to me and grabs my elbow like we’ve been friends our whole lives and starts asking me questions at ten lightyears a minute. And he steers me to the mess hall like it’s nothing, and nobody ever found out that I’d been crying. I’ve never told anyone, Finn. But that’s how I met Muran.”

Finn still doesn't react. Poe didn't really think he would. He looks down at Finn, machines blinking _STABLE_ and a lot of numbers that Poe doesn't understand. He watches his chest rise and fall. He's alive. His mouth is slightly open, lower lip already getting chapped from the air. Soon enough, he'll have a tube down his throat to keep him from choking on his own saliva, like Mamá did at the end. Poe has seen this before.

He's seen death in most of its forms, he thinks. Sudden. Dreaded. Welcomed. Slow. 

Poe stands. He touches Finn's shoulder and adjusts the thin sleeve of his smock. "I'm gonna find you some bacta, buddy. And we'll get you back on your feet. Just hang in there for me, okay? And if not for me, then hang in there for Rey."

The quiet, constant beeping of the med-bay doesn't change as Poe trudges back towards the officers' quarters. 

He doesn't feel much like sleeping anymore.


	3. INTERLUDE: FINN

_That_ stench _._

_Finn would know that stench anywhere, the sulfur heat of it burning through his sinuses even through the filter on his helmet. It was an alive stench, crawling and growing, inescapable and sticking. It melted like fat into the pores of skin and stuck in the joints of 'trooper armor. Not even the sanisteamer could really ever get rid of it, not really._

_The sanitation system aboard the_ Finalizer _. A city's worth of rotten meat and human waste and ashes, chemicals and droid parts and all manner of contraband, all crushed into an 8x8 space to become fetid soup. He has to find a way out. Quickly._

_Had – had he never left?_

_Did Jakku not happen? The raid, the order, the horrible welling of_ this is wrong _under his chest? The escape, Poe Dameron, a TIE fighter crash – Rey – Han Solo – Han Solo – snow –_

_A lightsaber burn._

_Finn can feel it all over, up the length of his back and pierced into his shoulder. But it burns at the top of his thigh, too, criss-crossed over his forearms, a fiery split over his face. He doesn't remember getting those. Bacta is for the weak, that furious burn is power, pain is power, there is no peace there is no peace there is no peace there is no –_

__Shut up _rings in Finn's ears, and the pain is gone. Not gone: compacted, pressed into a ball of fire and acid licking up his esophagus to make him bleed dry from the inside out. This is not the first time. It may be his last, if the Supreme Leader deems this failure unforgivable. The route to His Wisdom is circuitous and feeding to the autopilot of this wretched vessel in coded step by coded step: they have already turned back twice, His Wisdom indeed wise enough to conceal his location even from the loyal –_

_Perhaps he no longer sees either man loyal. Such magnificent failures could only be sabotage, like the shameful legacies of Krennic and Erso and Tarkin, all brought low by their own hubris…_

_But he had succeeded where they failed! The Republic is gone! The First Order will rise to heights even the Empire stumbled to reach, because once Snoke sees the weakness of_ the Knights of Ren _he will rid the First Order of the mysticism of the Force –_

_"He'll kill you," Finn – Not Finn; Finn? Not-Finn – slurs, and his lips crack open to bleed red copper into the edges of his teeth. He looks like a monster. He is a monster. He wants to be a monster, a monster wouldn't be thinking of Han Solo – Han Solo –_ traitor! __

_"Shut up." Finn, again, another Finn, another – not-Finn; Finn has never felt… this _hatred_ that breathes through every strand of bone marrow. The hatred burns as hot as the lightsaber wounds, as inescapable as that _ stench _. It is that stench: rotting through bowels, sliming its way through crevices and cracks into any place it will fit, leaking to overflow its boundaries until it spills everywhere._

_Finn feels like he might drown in it, that searing-thick certainty that_ everyone who does not bow to the Supreme Leader must die _, and he opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out –_

Air, blessed clean air, filtered and tasteless, empty of sludge and ash and death, flows in. Sweet, clean, cool air, and silence. He can't feel his legs, his arms, his own heartbeat. Everything feels muffled and soft, like Finn is wrapped in a cloud. When he tries to open his eyes, they don't obey. He watches the dark speed past his eyelids. Somewhere in the pit of his chest, he can feel the hyperspace pull of that fiery, painful anger roaring through the vacuum of space.

It hurts.

It feels like – it was never home, but it was all that Finn knew until he crash-landed on Jakku and his whole life changed.

On the other side of the darkness, where he can sense softness and sweet air, warmth and concern and care flicker like a distant star. His life _did_ change that day. Rey. Poe Dameron. The Resistance. 

Something in his chest tells Finn that this is where he needs to be, here, this nexus point in the hollow between dark and light, both within his reach. He stands between them like a shield. He watches.

And he floats.


	4. Chapter Two

** CHAPTER TWO **

“General,” Poe interrupts, “I have a lead on a bacta pipeline making its way through neutral space, but I don’t like the odds of the First Order being able to corner it now that the Navy can’t blockade any trade routes.”

“Is the lead credible?”

“I think so, ma’am,” Poe says, and shows the holodata over the war table. “There’s been increased conflict between the Niktos cartel and the Guavian death gang here, near the matter field in the Unknown Regions near Rakata Prime. The spice trade is concentrated in the Inner Rim right now and I don’t think the Guavians are organized enough to tackle that, so they must be trafficking something else. Between us, the First Order, and any refugees from the Republic, bacta must be an enticing product.”

General Organa nods, studying the display of the Expansion Region where Poe’s marked known conflict spots in red light. “The Niktos are squarely in the stead of the First Order. What makes you think that the bacta pipeline isn’t directly to them?”

“The Guavians aren’t in anyone’s camp but cold, hard credits,” Poe says. “And if you look here—” he draws a line on the datapad, and it mirrors in the projection above the war table, “And here, then at least two of the conflicts were on a direct course towards the former location of Starkiller Base. I think the Guavians were diverting the supply for another buyer.”

“Who?”

“I’d like to find that out for myself, ma’am,” Poe admits. “And I’d like to make a deal. We need a tank, and we need to refill the field kits. Commander Kun, for example, would have been a great help in the Starkiller battle, and if we’d had a field kit stocked, she could have been healed to join the fight.”

General Organa nods and zooms into the Tashtor sector matter field. Pockets of sucking dark matter, tiny black holes without warning, without green bands before their yawning gapes sucked in ships and stars and battle debris, scar the sector, leaving patches empty of light in the holoprojection. She meets Poe’s eyes through one of the gaps.

“And Finn might recover,” Leia says. “If we had a bacta tank.”

“He’s going to recover,” Poe corrects. “He just might recover more quickly with a bacta tank.”

Leia blinks, bows her head once to agree. “It would be a great help to the Base if we could forge an alliance with someone hauling bacta. How many people do you need?”

“Actually,” Poe starts, “I was thinking I might start with a recon find out more about the conflict between the Guavians and the Niktos, because honestly, I have no idea what their numbers are if one or both are working with the First Order. I propose a 36-hour solo mission to Takodana. If there aren’t Guavians or Niktos there themselves, Maz Kanata will know exactly what’s going on.”

“Indeed she will,” Leia mutters, and Poe can’t help grinning.

He’s finally going to get clearance to leave the system. He can take BB-8 and open up the thrusters on Black One and _speed_ into the hyperlane. He can puddle-jump those dark matter craters, no problem. Like a game, like when he was a kid in Mamá’s lap in the A-wing, weaving over treetops and around the pyramidion of the Massassi temple. Like when he and Ben would jump in the mud during rainy season just to feel it splash.

“Commander Dameron, you have clearance for 36 hours, but you are ordered to check in every twelve hours since we are down two acting Flight Commanders. I’m also going to require that you wear a transmitter, in case you run into a conflict or any new First Order operations bases. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe says, and he’s giddy enough with the prospect of _flight again, finally_ that he curls his toes inside his boots. “Anything else?”

Leia’s lips tighten into a line. “If Maz has any more of my family’s heirlooms lying around in that rubble, bring ‘em back. And tell her that I’ll make the l’lahsh if she comes this way with an explanation.”

Poe nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

He spends the rest of the meeting feigning attention as he wriggles inside, itching under his blood to get out into his ship and break out of the kriffing atmosphere. He hasn’t been grounded for so long since he was seventeen and everyone at the Academy had to undergo investigation and background checks because of the attack at the Institute. Poe felt the same way, then, the same burning to explode and get out and just keep going until he found something to _do_ , something _useful_.

He is not going to fail Finn. He can’t.

* * *

“Poe Dameron!” Maz Kanata’s voice carries further than her height suggests it should. “Come here, my beautiful boyfriend; I am very upset with you!”

Poe gamely picks his way around the rubble piles that surround a deep chasm that used to be the basement of the Takodana castle, BB-8 beeping at his heels, and bends down for her to reach up to his face.

She rubs her wrinkled thumbs over his lips, the Felucian version of a kiss, and pinches his cheeks. “You destroyed my cantina and did not even have the decency to come say hello, boyfriend. Shara Bey did not raise you to be so rude.”

“I’m sorry, Maz,” Poe says, but she’s already let go of him and is instead clucking over BB-8, rubbing her hands over its crown. “We were in a bit of a rush that day.”

“Now, Beebee-Ate, Beebee-Ate visited me that day. Beebee-Ate was polite. You’re a good droid,” she says, patting Beebee’s head. “Beautiful boyfriend, what brings you here today besides the good sense to come and finally apologize to me?”

“Well, that, obviously,” Poe says. “I’m very sorry for taking part in the destruction of your castle. I’m also here to extend an invitation from General Organa that she will mix l’lahsh if you come to visit her with an explanation of where you got that lightsaber.”

“Hmm!” Maz hums through her nose. “I will consider it. Is that all you are here for, Poe Dameron? It seems as though the Princess could have invited me herself.” She beckons him forward and starts picking her way across the rubble field too, towards a ladder down into the chasm. “Come, boyfriend. You can apologize to me by helping to dig out the foundation for my new cantina.”

Poe didn’t expect for it to be so easy to get close to Maz’s compatriots without the castle in business–but working side-by-side with them under the Takodana sun, that’s just as good, and he won’t have to pretend to drink while staying sober to fly. A quick look down into the chasm tells him what he already knew: none of the dangerous clients, the ones who would always, always be in the market to bag the Resistance’s best pilot, would deign be _helpful_. No Bazine Netal. No Frigosians. No Grummgar. Even so, he’s glad for the blaster on his hip and the spare hidden on his ankle.

But the Crimson Corsair and his crew are in the pit, digging away with wide shovels and greedy eyes, the crew singing a pirate song in scraping, rusty Huttese. Niktos, too, both subspecies; Poe is more wary of the affiliations of the red than the green. There are humans down in the pit, too, with garb from five different systems, singing along with terrible humanoid accents in the syllables on their tongues. Above the pit, BB-8 rolls at a quick clip next to Maz, beeping at her with exuberance.

Maz turns back and gestures to Poe again. “Hurry up, Poe Dameron. You are too young to move so slowly, boyfriend. If you do a good job apologizing, then I have a gift for you.”

“Besides your company?” Poe asks as he throws her a grin and a wink. He climbs down the ladder into the pit. One of the Arconai grunts at him and points toward the spare shovels.

“A charmer!” Maz Kanata sounds delighted. She languishes on a chaise longue at the side of the pit, an enormous glass of something bright teal and clinking with ice in her hands, and she pats the side of the chaise in invitation for BB-8 to join her. “You, get to work, pilot. I miss my castle.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Poe picks up the nearest shovel that is remotely close to being light enough for a human to heft and starts digging. The burnt stone, broken glass, and occasional bone or rotting sac of cartilage and alien fluid are still clogging up portions of the sprawling space where the castle once stood, and Poe is amazed that anyone survived. From the air, it was harder to see the extent of the carnage. He had been so focused on shooting down TIEs, so focused on hitting white-shelled troopers with his bolts, trying so hard not to think of Finn, the trooper he had left to die in the Jakku sand.

Only he hadn’t died. And he isn’t going to, not on Poe’s watch.

And then—and then Poe had seen the same Upsilon ship, black wings folding like death into the air over Takodana, and he’d shot and shot and shot… and missed, and missed, and missed. And because he missed, Finn’s friend had been taken. _Rey_ had been taken. Kylo Ren took Rey and ripped into her head, too, because Poe just couldn’t make a damn hit.

He’d seen that hulking masked figure carrying Rey in his arms across the rubble after the TIEs began to retreat, and he _knew_ what that monster was going to do to the limp girl lolling against him. He knew, and his stomach hurt, and—

He sent Jessika and Ello after the TIEs and he’d chased after that Upsilon-class until the edge of the Tashtor sector, but he couldn’t take on the entire First Order alone. He couldn’t take on Kylo Ren alone.

He’d already proven that.

“So, Beebee-Ate,” Poe overhears Maz say overhead, “Tell me, what has kept my beautiful boyfriend so busy that it’s taken him this long to come check on me?”

[We were not cleared for intersector flight detail.] BB-8 beeps ruefully. [It was very boring. I like your homeworld. It is not boring!]

“I’m glad to hear it,” Maz says. “And your friends, Beebee-Ate? The stormtrooper and the girl? Why are they not here?”

[Hero-Rey is training to become a Jedi! She is with Designation: Luke Skywalker], BB-8 reports. Then its tone turns melancholy. [Friend-Finn is in low power mode ever since the victory at Designation: Starkiller Base. The Force complicates repair protocol for his injuries.]

“Yes, I suspect that you are correct. I have seen lightsaber wounds in the past, but very few survive battles against the users of the Dark side. Your friend Finn is very strong.”

Poe loses the thread of Maz's conversation with BB-8 as he finds a rhythm to digging out the rubble. It's been years since he really had a shovel in his hands, but the muscle memory of days spent out in the orchard tending to the koyo bushes and preparing the wet, rich black soil of Yavin IV for next season's zeacorn and denta beans and ruica feels good even as it makes his shoulders ache. The year he burned the Force tree, Poe spent more time with his hands in the dirt than he did flying. But that was a lifetime ago.

Around him, the pirates and brigands dig and sing chanteys. Poe watches one of the suerton underlings with a black eye-patch pilfer some gold coins and a transparisteel goblet from beneath a piece of fallen battlement. He should say something—do something—but before he has to decide whether to blow his cover, a bright blue stunning blast hits the suerton square in its squat chest.

Maz hardly blinks as she holsters her blaster. "Boyfriend, please check his pockets before you roll him over. I do not want to deal with him suffocating in my dirt."

Poe shakes his head and does as he's told. The rest of the suerton crew look uncharacteristically downtrodden as they continue to work, at least until their brother wakes with a groan and a lurching gate back towards them for his shovel.

The suerton captain pulls a bacta patch from her satchel and chitters as she unpeels the backing. The acrid fruity scent floods the pit, and it strikes Poe anew just how long it's been since he's actually had access to bacta.

But these pirates do.

After just enough time has passed that he doesn't _think_ he looks suspicious, Poe sidles over towards the suerton pirates.

"Achuta," Poe says, nodding. _Hello._ He reaches into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a dented flask. "Yocola lopey?" He keeps both hands visible. "Dolpee kikyuna!" _I'm a friend._

The one-eyed, woozy suerton with a bacta patch around his dewlap holds out those oversize, puffy hands. "Eniki, mi yarga."

"Panwa." Poe holds out the flask, but the captain places herself authoritatively between Poe and her brother pirate.

"Bolla chooskoo, sleemo." 

Poe grins with half of his mouth and lifts the flask to his lips. He takes a stiff swig and swallows. It's perfectly fine, if watered down. "Nagoola. No ni fierfek, no ni cheeska." 

The captain's beady eyes watch him for another minute before she nods her assent, and Poe hands the injured first mate his flask. 

"Mypee kasa Poe. Ah'chu apenkee?"

"We – speak – Bas – ic." The captain burps the words, her dewlap engorging with each breath to push the strangely shaped syllables from her lipless mouth. "Cap – tain – La – li – lo – di. My – crew. What – do – you – want?"

"Captain Lalilodi." Poe inclines his head in respect. "Where did you get those bacta patches?" 

The short, squat suertons exchange weary glances, except for the one-eyed first mate whose attention is wholly consumed by shaking the last of the flask of weak red wine into his mouth. His long tongue flicks out fast as a blaster bolt to wriggle inside the flask's small spout. It thumps around the inside corners of the flask as he searches for the faint final drops.

"Not – yours." Captain Lalilodi crosses her arms. "We – won – them. Fair. Lost – two – crates – of – mer – chan – dise."

"I don't want to take it from you," Poe assures her. "I can pay to replace your lost merchandise, if you tell me where you won the bacta supply."

"Ve – ry – pre – cious," she warns him. "Was – cho – co – late. Loth – al. Real. Ve – ry – ex – pen – sive. You – pay – first."

Poe smiles at her. Chocolate? Even real Lothal chocolate is worth hardly anything, especially when compared with the goods being smuggled and fought over by the other pirates in the pit. He won't even have to feel guilty later about letting a shipment of spice or weaponry keep flowing unchecked through the trade routes.

It feels like another lifetime ago when it would have been his problem, but the instincts are still there.

He just wants to keep the Galaxy safe.

"Chocolate, I can pay for right now," he says. "Do you have any left? I might even buy some."

"Two – hun – dred – cre – dits – to – re – place. Two – hun – dred – cre – dits – to – buy." Her dewlap quivers. "Two – hun – dred – more – for – in – for – ma – tion."

Poe scratches the back of his neck. "Six hundred credits. I'll pay. Let me get a chip from my droid."

"We – watch." Dark, wet eyes measure his every step as Poe climbs out of the pit and brushes his hands clean on the sides of his pants before he kneels in front of BB-8. BB-8 codes out a credit chip with invisible tracking lines, just in case, and Poe gives it an affectionate belly-rub before he stands. Maz's enormous eyes watch him, too, gaze flickering in the reflection of the sunlight against her big glasses. She takes a long sip of that teal cocktail, flutters a red paper fan in the breeze to cool her wrinkled orange skin.

Poe jumps down into the pit again. He approaches Captain Lalilodi and presents the chip.

"Too – long – wait. An – oth – er – two – hun – dred."

"I thought that's what you might say." Poe laughs, even though the game is old. "There's a thousand on the chip. It can go to you or it can go to someone else here; I'll bet the red Niktos have some ideas about where I can find bacta – "

"No!" Captain Lalilodee's skin feels like a descaled fish when she snatches the chip from Poe's fingers. "Rundee nibobo. Yuna puna wamma. Fair – is – fair." She tucks the credit chip into her mouth and it disappears beneath a holding flap beneath that long, sticky, rolled tongue. The suertons all circle around Poe as though to build a wall of secrecy. "You – know – Mzimu? Cloud – pla – net. We – trade – with – them. Long – all – ies. Good – trade – brok – ers. But – most – rec –ent – trade – am – bushed. Kark – ing – Gua – vi – ans!" A chitter of disapproval and cursing ripples around the circle of amphibious pirates surrounding Poe. "Ask – Mzimui – why – Gua – vi – an – slee – mos – don't – need – brok – ers – now. And – then – tell – us. Mzimui – take – five – per – cent. Our – cre – dits!"

"Mzimu," Poe says, thoughtfully, keeping his face blank. "That's out in Wild Space, isn't it? It's a gas giant. I thought it couldn't be terraformed. If you're lying to me…" He makes a slow show of reaching back into his jacket.

"No! No ni cheeska. Mzimui – live – on – gas. Mzimu – is… binggona bosco verbo… azalus. Azalus, killee killee!" She mimes with both hands crossed over her dewlap, makes a sound like she's choking.

"Dangerous?" Poe guesses. "The air there is dangerous?"

"Yes. But – trade – brok – er – age – im – port – ant. Worth – buy – ing – hel – mets. Or – used – to – be. Now…" Her shoulders slump. "On – ly – Gua – vi – ans – work – big – routes. Ma – ny – am – bush. No – work – for – suer – tons – with – pride!" She shakes her fist. "We – do – not – work – for – the – luck-y – three! We – do – not – sell – out – Suer – ti – do!"

"First – Ord – er – kark – ers!" slurs the first mate with his eye patch. He throws Poe's flask down in the turned-up dirt of the pit and makes a rude noise with his long, long tongue.

Poe's eyebrows rise. "So the Guavians _are_ working for the First Order, huh?"

"They – have – no – pride! Will – work – for – cred – its – on – ly. Not – us!" Captain Lalidodi thumps her chest with a fist the size of Poe's head. It makes a wet, squishing sound. "If – suer – tons – with – pride – could – use – blast – ers – we – would – blow – First – Ord – er – away!"

Poe grins. "Tell you what. In addition to those thousand credits, I'll do it for you. Can you give me a starchart to Mzimu?"

By the time most of the sunlight has fallen behind the canopy of leafy trees on Takodana, Poe is among the last beings left digging in the pit that used to Maz's castle. He has what he came here for: information about the black market bacta trade. He also found a new ally for the Resistance, albeit not the most useful of allies he's persuaded to their cause. Anyone willing to take a firm stand against the First Order matters, in his book.

His back and shoulders are sore from the heft of the shovel, but it's a pleasant soreness. It reminds him of peacetime back home. 

All the same, he grunts when he heaves himself up and out of the pit to gather up Beebee and make the return flight back to base. His hair is probably a complete mess when he trudges up to Maz's chaise longue.

“So, my beautiful boyfriend, when are you bringing me beautiful Bey babies to cuddle?” Maz Kanata asks, still sipping blithely from her teal drink.

“That depends; when are you going to agree to marry me?” Poe asks, and he smiles down at Maz.

“Hmm!” Maz hums through her nose again. “In your dreams, you should be so lucky. I could never give up on my other boyfriends. No, Poe Dameron, I was being quite serious.”

Poe blinks. “I—don’t know. I’m not having any children in the near future, as far as I know, Maz.”

The teal drink is set on the ground near BB-8, who beeps at it curiously and tilts up as if to give it a sniff. Maz stands on the chaise and she’s nearly as tall as Poe that way, her hands adjusting the lenses of her goggles until her eyes are enormous, the size of faraway moons. “I think you are hiding something from me, Poe Dameron. There is a look about you.”

“I’m not hiding anything from you! Never you, Maz.” Poe holds up his hands—crusted in dirt though they are—and laughs. “You know you’re my best girl. My only girl.”

The goggles _click_. The eyes grow even bigger. “I disagree. The Force always glows bright around you, Poe Dameron, but now it is singing. You must hear it. Ever since you were a little child and Shara Bey first brought you to me to show you off, the Force has had a love affair with you. Why are you keeping it waiting?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Poe says, and swallows down the dream of the Force tree back home, of Muran fading away and Rey shining bright. “I don’t have the Force more than any other average human, Maz. Maybe just enough to be a little luckier shot.”

“Not when you were hitting my castle,” Maz snorts. “No, you are wrong, Poe Dameron. Or maybe misguided by the way the Force has hurt you in your life. But don’t you see the way those who command the Force are always drawn to you?” She touches his face again, palms against his cheeks grown stubbly over the long day. “Your good heart is like a well of the Light, my beautiful boyfriend. Your mother, Shara Bey, she was the same. It is why Luke Skywalker entrusted her, and you, with the Force tree. I think your role in the fight is to sow seeds of the Light in any way you can. Those to whom the Force calls find their way to you. It is inevitable.”

Poe swallows.

* * *

[You have been awake for 29 hours 38 minutes and 16 seconds, Friend-Poe.] BB-8 chastises. [There is not an active attack on Designation: Resistance Base-Home. Protocol dictates that you must take twelve unscheduled hours including eight hours sleep.] It nudges his muddy calves and whirrs. [Friend-Poe, I have not seen you sleep to a tertiary state and restorative rest cycle in four weeks, four days, and eleven hours.] It tilts its head. [Do you require a new color blankets?]

“No, buddy, I’m fine,” Poe says. “Just haven’t been sleeping well. But I promise I will, okay? I just need to shower and I’m gonna eat something and then you and me, we’re gonna recharge.”

[You were very nice to help Eyes-Change dig the big holes!]

“Yeah,” Poe grumbles. He’s still not sure how Maz talked him into digging out so much of the wreckage. 

[I like Eyes-Change!] BB-8 beeps. [She is just my size.]

The door to Poe’s quarters slides open, and BB-8 continues to chatter an extremely detailed retelling of every story Maz had told on Takodana even though Poe heard them all clearly the first time. He shucks his muddy flight suit and graces Beebee with cursory _uh-huh_ s and _oh really?_ s, and even his skin beneath the thick material is grimy. There's so much to think about, so much to plan. He has to find an EVA suit. Research the best way to reach Mzimu. And what the frak to do with these giant cases of chocolate, which weigh so much more in his tired arms than he'd thought they would.

He feels wrung out.

It _has_ been too long since he’s gotten real sleep.

[And then! Eyes-Change told about the Jedi Master who is also just my size! Were you listening?]

“Yes, Beebee-Ate, I was listening.” Poe yawns, rubbing his eyes as he toes out of his thick socks. He drops his filthy clothes through the laundry chute on the way to the fresher. The door slides open as BB-8 keeps beep-boop-beeping and Poe kind of stops listening enough to actually translate the Binary in his head. As long as he responds somehow every so often, it’s perfectly content.

[Friend-Poe! Friend-Poe!]

The light in the fresher is low, evening-light that saves power on base, and it’s dim enough that it makes Poe yawn again and again. If he couldn’t feel the grit of dirt and broken duracrete in his hair, he’d just fall into bed. Instead, he murmurs encouragingly at Beebee’s excited noise.

“Yeah,” he mutters, and steps onto the cold tile.

Only it’s not cold.

And there’s already hot water pouring down from the fresher nozzles. It's loud, a comforting sound like the storms back home. But –

The transparisteel stall door is still clear, the privacy setting not switched on. "Poe Dameron?"

 _Rey_. Back from—wherever the map led, Rey in his shower again like she’d never left, only now he’s in here, too, and her eyes are huge and startled and and she’s got her hands over her mouth in surprise—

This is… probably what Beebee’s been shrieking at him for at least a minute now, isn’t it.

Long, long legs, smooth with muscle, a white scar—a brand, Poe realizes, on a blink—in the shape of some alien cuneiform shape at the top of one thigh at a gentle, sloping hip. She’s got more meat on her bones than she did when she left, her hipbones protruding less sharply and her ribs more firmly inside her skin. Poe tries not to notice, he really tries, but her breasts are still small and pretty and plump and _oh, kriff,_ her nipples are so lovely and pointed and Poe wants to suck one between his lips and make her purr.

He needs to look away.

[Hero-Rey!] BB-8 beeps happily, zooming across the floor towards the fresher stall. [It is nice to see you! Did you bring Designation: Artoo-Detoo home with you?]

Rey doesn’t answer, still blinking at Poe, her jaw slack. Water runs over her face and slicks tendrils of hair down to her cheeks.

Poe blinks fast. Hits the button for the privacy setting. The fresher stall door fogs over, but stops in a crisp line just beneath her chin. Poe can still see the shape of Rey behind it, all angles and straight lines. 

Her face is still clear. Clear, and judgmental.

“Ah, Beebee-Ate, let’s go back to the room, okay?” Poe manages, and he trips on the mat as he backs out of the fresher and fumbles for a towel. “It’s Rey’s turn to use the fresher.” He looks up and looks at the mirror instead of back into the fresher stall, and he can see her silhouette reflected in the glass. “Just, uh, no rush. I’m—sorry. I’m so sorry. No rush. Take your time. I’m sorry.”

Poe tightens the towel around his waist to chastise his stupid, inappropriate, traitorous erection and lays a hand on BB-8’s dome. “Come on, BB-8. You can talk to Rey later and tell her all about how Maz is doing.”

[Hero-Rey, I missed you!] BB-8 purrs sweetly.

“I missed you, too, Beebee-Ate,” Rey says. Her voice doesn’t shake at all, but Poe can’t bring himself to look back and see if her eyes are still so huge.

So he doesn’t: he looks at the reflection in the mirror instead, can’t help it, and she’s looking right back at him, the water still running in shining rivulets over her shoulders and pooling in the hollows of her collarbone and he can’t be imagining that her nipples harden under his gaze. She isn’t looking at his face, but somewhere lower.

Well, he could imagine that, but he doesn’t think he is.

Poe stubs his foot on the doorframe as he stumbles back out to the main room of his quarters.

[Friend-Poe! Hero-Rey is home!] BB-8 beeps, sounding like it would hyperventilate with excitement if it needed oxygen. [May I go to the War Room to see if Artoo-Detoo is available for recreational activity?]

Poe is aware that BB-8 is wheeling in frantic circles around him, completely unaware that a massive firestorm of some horrific magnitude just happened in Poe’s fresher, but he doesn’t actually see the little orange-and-white blur so much because it seems like the image of Rey is burned into his vision like looking too long at a nova, so everything is a dark reflection afterwards, and worse when he closes his eyes. She was beautiful before she left, but Poe doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone more gorgeous than Rey now.

BB-8 rams him in the calves. [Please? Please? Please?]

“Um, yeah, go ahead, buddy,” Poe says, and the droid door swings behind BB-8 in its haste to go find R2.

And then Poe is alone, naked but for the loose towel and still with the drips of water that got onto him in the moment he’d been under the shower’s spray running ticklish down his shoulders and face and chest, standing in the middle of his room.

He should put pants on before Rey emerges and thinks…

He doesn’t really want to know what she’d think.

She is so beautiful, and so young, and was so alone for so long. And now she’s a Jedi, and she can probably read every thought in his head from here. Shit. Poe is a terrible, old, tired, old man. Rey is going to hate him. He’s never been sure whether Rey liked him in the first place or just trusted Finn and loved BB-8, but now she is absolutely going to hate him.

Poe ties the waistband of his sleep-pants and shrugs into a plain shirt, and then he’s sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. It’s better if she hates him, at least, than if she’s afraid of him.

Fuck. Shit. Kriffing hell.

He’s so tired. And she’s so _good_.

The sound of the door to the fresher sliding open makes Poe jerk his head up, and there’s Rey, dressed again, with a sweet-scented roll of warm, humid air following behind her and filling the space between them.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Poe opens his mouth to beg apologies—

“I’m sorry,” Rey says in a rush, still huddled back near the fresher door. “I’m sorry, I was in your space. Threepio let me in, but—I’m sorry.”

“Rey, it’s okay,” Poe says. “ _I’m_ sorry. I was distracted and didn’t even notice… anything. Are you okay?”

Rey’s brow furrows. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?” She pauses, and Poe feels distinctly like she’s trying to work a difficult calculation in her head. “Are… you okay?”

Poe smiles at her and nods. “Yeah, bud. As long as you’re okay, then I’m okay. I’m sorry, though. Again.”

Rey just nods and idles at the door, watching him warily, but there’s something else in her eyes, too, and Poe lets her drink him in. He’s used to the way she flickers her big eyes all over him, but this is… different. _She_ looks different, even though she was only gone a month: her hair is loose, for one thing, and still wet from the fresher. There’s one tiny braid behind her ear, but the way the fall of brown hair frames her face makes her look older than she did when they met. Her face is less pinched. More secure.

Finally, Poe nods to her. “Those the same clothes you left in?”

Rey shrugs. “Only set I have. The medical droids took my others.”

“Here.” Poe crosses to his footlocker and digs out a stack of the white t-shirts that have grown just slightly too small across the shoulders. “It’s not much, but you can have these until you get your own. Or just keep them, if you want.”

Rey, if anything, looks even warier, and does not take them.

It takes a moment, but then Poe is profoundly glad that BB-8 is off harassing C3PO with R2. “It’s not… I’m not giving you these as payment for—”

“No, I know,” Rey interrupts. “You’re not… like that.”

“Neither are you,” Poe says. “Nobody here thinks that way or is going to—you’re safe and important and, you know, I think we were both tired and surprised and embarrassed, at least I was embarrassed, and that’s it. Just a thing. Doesn’t mean anything.” He shakes the folded shirts a little. “D’you want these or should I give ‘em to Beebee-Ate to play with?”

“I’ll take them.” She snatches them against her chest so quickly it might be a Force trick. “Thank you.” Rey studies his face for another long moment. “I suppose my shoulders are narrower than yours. You’ve got quite muscular arms.”

“Oh, please. You could throw me across the room if you wanted.” Poe smiles back at her. “You eat since you got back?”

Rey shakes her head. She’s still clutching the shirts like they’re something precious.

“I’ll meet you in the Pilots’ rec room and cook something, if you want,” Poe offers. “I’m just gonna—” he gestures back to the fresher—“And find Beebee. I know it wants to tell you all about our adventures while you were gone. And I want to hear about how the Falcon handled that much hyperspace.”

Rey nods at him, her lip between her teeth. “Alright. Thank you. I’d like to see Beebee-Ate. It said you saw Maz?”

Poe nods and gestures to his grimy face. “Today, actually. She talked me into digging a giant hole. Beebee’ll tell you about it.”

Rey’s mouth twitches, and then she laughs, and it’s the best thing Poe’s heard in a month. “Alright. Thank you, and—I’m sorry again. I won’t… I think I’m getting my own quarters tomorrow. So.”

“Great,” Poe says. “I mean, it’s no problem. Really, it was my fault. But I’m glad you’re getting quarters, and… I’m glad you’re staying here.”

Rey grins at him with all of her teeth. “Well, I don’t have to go back to Jakku. I brought Luke back, and… and this is where I need to be.” She looks uncomfortable for a moment, but smiles again and slips away.

Then she’s gone, the door silent as it slides shut again. Poe knows that he’s still tired down to his bones, but there’s an energy in the air that wasn’t there before—that’s been missing for a long time, and he doesn’t really want to think about what that means. His stomach grumbles.

This time, he’s sure that he’s alone when he shucks his pants and t-shirt and pads back into the fresher. The mirrors are still slightly clouded with condensation and the floor is damp all across the room, like Rey had paced for a bit. Poe can’t imagine that Ahch-To had been much more sophisticated than Jakku in the amenities department, and he hopes that he didn’t startle Rey out of feeling able to take her time and treat herself well.

There’s a particular pool under the sink, like she’d stood in front of the mirror for a while to examine herself.

From the time he’d been stuck on Jakku, Poe suspects that Rey had never really had the chance to look at herself until she arrived on D’Qar. The idea of her standing right here, her hands skimming over her skin as she studies her long neck, her breasts, her belly, as she admires the shape of her body, warms Poe. His erection hadn’t quite had the chance to flag anyway, but it’s definitely back in full force now.

Poe grits his teeth and jabs the water on. The scent of his soap is already thick in the shower chamber, the air still humid and hot. He’s only imagining that it smells any different than after his own showers; soap is soap. He can’t smell Rey.

The problem is, as Poe rubs soap over his skin, scrubbing down to remove the grime of Takodana, he can’t help but picture Rey doing the same. It’s clearer than a holo image, the pink flush on her skin under the hot water and the way she always looks at the simplest things with an expression of awe.

_That pretty blush spreading down over her neck as Poe’s fingers slip between her legs; the hot water and clear glass of the booth shutting them away from the rest of the galaxy. Rey is already stretched and sweet and fuck-hot here, and Poe’s fingers come away coated in the thick slipperiness of his own come._

_“You sure you want to go again already?”_

Rey’s hands would be smaller than his own, the traitor part of Poe’s brain taunts, but she isn’t actually here now, is she, so he just tightens his fingers around his cock.

_“Can’t you feel that I am?” Rey murmurs, just loudly enough to be heard over the hard sound of the water hitting tile. The way she touches him back isn’t tentative, but her teeth worry at her lip like this is still new enough to be just a shade intimidating._

_Everything is dreamlike in the haze of the shower’s steam. Rey turns and rests one foot on the low shelf where Poe keeps the soaps and sponges; standing back enough to keep from getting water in his eyes, Poe can see the thin white trickle of himself teasing its way down the inside of her strong, lean thigh._

_He knuckles it away._ Poe licks a drop of precome off his thumb and has to groan, short and cut-off in his chest, eyes still closed, because he shouldn’t want any of this, but it feels oddly real and—now the taste, too.

 _Poe fits himself into Rey where she’s already soft and sloppy and it’s such a_ good _slide, like she was made for him—or he was made for her, which feels more likely somewhere in the pit of his chest. Her head is heavy where it tips back to loll against his shoulder. Breath puffs in his ear as he breathes, too, air and heartbeats and the tensing of muscles all twined._

_“Alright?” Poe’s lips brush Rey’s ear. “Not too sore?”_

_“It’s perfect.” Rey’s hands lift and weave into Poe’s hair, just the right pressure, just the right pain as she tugs by the roots and Poe jerks deeper inside her. “C’mon, Poe, I want more. Everything.”_

“I’d give you anything,” Poe mumbles aloud, and the pace speeds as _he braces his hands on Rey’s belly, low enough that his smallest finger can brush through the light tangle of hair and slip-shush over her messy clit. Her skin is warm and taut and smooth under his palms. Rey feels right in his hands._

 _“Fill me up,” Rey whispers. “Put a baby in me, Poe,” she whispers,_ because Poe’s imagination isn’t very creative when he’s about to come but oh, Force, it still works, and he grunts as he pulses over and over into his hand, the other slammed up against the wall to keep him upright as his sleepy knees buckle.

Well. Alright. So that’s a thing that works for him, Poe supposes. He catches his breath and keeps staring down at the water circling down the drain, evidence already whisked away from his pelvis and thighs by the cascade. He blinks a few times to clear droplets from his eyelashes.

He feels itchy with guilt under his skin as he soaps up again and rinses quickly. Rey is too young for him, and she’s a Jedi, a fucking Jedi, and she probably—she was all alone at that junkyard outpost for so long, she’s probably had more than a lifetime of sad old men looking at her that way.

Poe shuts off the water and towels off with brutal efficiency, desperately ignoring the beautifully relaxed buzzing of his muscles. He hasn’t come that hard in months. And that’s—fine, it’s out of his system. It’s to be expected; he just saw her naked. _(Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.)_

It’s nearly 0100 hours, and he’s only going to the Pilots’ rec, so he just pulls on a clean pair of soft sleep pants and a plain, worn black t-shirt rather than his casuals. He combs through his hair with his fingers, but it’s—it’s just Rey, and she doesn’t care what he looks like, because he’s just old Poe. So he leaves it.

The War Room is locked when he arrives and even his officers’ code doesn’t open the door, so Poe turns and heads back toward the Pilots’ wing. The light there is dim, too, but he can see Rey sitting on the floor with BB-8 chattering excitedly at her just near the tables in the small, rudimentary kitchen.

[And then Eyes-Change told about the Jedi Master who is also just my size!] BB-8 beeps. [Did you meet Designation: Yoda-Jedi?]

“I didn’t,” Rey says apologetically as she strokes over BB’s gyro casing with gentle hands. “But Luke told me about him. And do you know what, Beebee-Ate?”

[What?]

“I think maybe you are bigger than Master Yoda was,” Rey says, and she smiles. Beebee’s answering shrill delight makes Poe grin, too, and Rey meets his eyes from her place on the floor. BB-8 wobbles in happy circles around Rey and then around Poe, connecting them in a figure eight.

“Did it find Artoo?” Poe asks, and he opens the conservator. Eggs, blue milk, some containers of jellied things in various colors that Poe does not personally think food ought to be. “And how does Alderaanian toast sound?”

“Artoo’s with the General and Luke,” Rey says. “I think—I think they’re talking about Han. And what happened.”

Poe sobers as he nods, carton of eggs tucked under his chin. “I heard you and Finn saw it. I’m sorry.”

Rey nods and reaches out to touch BB-8 again, and her soft fingers stop Beebee’s joyous wheeling; instead, the droid nudges in close to her and tilts its dome towards her head, clucking.

“I don’t know how much I can say,” Rey hedges, looking up at Poe. “Some of it’s… classified.”

Poe tries to smile without dislodging the eggs. “I understand. Usual peril of conversation around a base, don’t worry. Alderaanian toast? Any objections?”

“I’ve never had it,” Rey says and shakes her head. “Is it good?”

“Eh, it’s probably better if I’m not the one making it,” Poe admits, “But I won’t burn the building down.”

“Alright.” Rey smiles at him, all teeth and lightness in her eyes, and Poe’s stomach jumps a little as he tries to push the sound of her imaginary voice begging him to fuck a baby into her out of his mind. Forever.

Beebee looks from Poe to Rey and back again several times, and Poe can see its optical lens dilating and contracting as it takes some kind of algorithmic measurements to discern meaning from their expressions, their silence, the context. He gives BB-8 a meaningful look and then turns away to start cracking huge eggs into a bowl with the egg chisel.

[Hero-Rey!] BB-8 beeps, [Would you like to hear more stories about events which transpired in my presence in the last four weeks and five days?]

Poe can’t help smiling to himself, a light blush on his cheeks, as Rey’s indulgent voice promises, “Yes, of _course_ , Beebee-Ate, I always want to hear about your adventures with Poe.”

* * *

He’s more pleased than he can quite rationalize that Rey hits it off so immediately with the rest of the pilots. Ground crew, too, and BB-8 must have regaled all of the droids on base with the same adoring tales that it told Poe, because by the end of the week, Rey has a beeping coterie around her at most hours of the day.

As such, Poe sees Rey quite a lot considering she isn’t in either of his squadrons. When she isn’t with Luke Skywalker, and she isn’t having closed-door meetings with the General and Threepio that Poe can’t begin to speculate about, Rey is just… there. He sees her most often in the med bay, when they both turn up to spend a quiet thirty minutes with Finn. He never changes: just lies there, still and silent, waiting for some sign that no one can guess. Poe has half a mind to wonder whether some part of Finn is waiting for the all-clear, for the sign that the First Order has been destroyed and it’s safe for him to _be_. He’s gone back into the belly of the beast once before.

Poe doesn’t blame him for not being able to face the idea of ever, ever having to do it again.

Even with as much as Poe owes Finn—and he owes him not only his own life, but the lives of every single person left on this Base, and maybe the galaxy itself—it is not interesting to watch someone in a coma. So Poe watches Rey watch Finn. He tries to be discreet about it; glances up at her and then away, toward wherever BB-8 is investigating, or back towards the other sections of the med bay where beings drift in and out for small remedies.

The way that Rey looks at Finn makes something in Poe ache. Every so often she touches his cheek like she’s searching for the hint of a smile, like Finn’s just playing a prank and she can catch him and he’ll sit up to say, _alright, you caught me!_

She just looks at him with so much _hope_. Poe can’t remember anyone ever looking at him that way.

“So,” Poe says finally, and Rey’s eyes flick from Finn’s hands to Poe’s face. “I’ve heard Beebee-Ate’s point of view, but… what was it like when you met Finn?”

“Terrible.” Rey smiles, a pang that Poe can feel, and she adjusts the collar of a hospital gown that hasn’t moved in weeks. “And wonderful. It was… new. Nothing really new happened to me in a very long time. And then all of a sudden, everything was new. All at once.”

Poe knows what she means. The way she looks down at Finn, the way he’d spoken about her—Poe remembers being twenty and finding someone who made the whole world new.

“Beebee says you defended my honor,” Poe presses. Light, teasing. He wants to know what Finn was really like as much as he wants to have a reason to talk to Rey, to have Rey talk to him, to be—friends. He just wants to be friends. “From this coat-thief here.”

Rey does grin at that, although she still doesn’t look up at Poe. She smiles at Finn like if she welcomes him into her light warmly enough, he’ll wake up, just like that.

“So,” Poe prompts. “Tell me the story. Or I’ll have to take Beebee’s word for it that you’re a hero who runs like a speeder and is more fearsome than a rathtar.”

“Obviously, that’s true,” Rey says, and she does look up at Poe, and that smile is washing over _his_ face, and all Poe can do is smile back. “Shall I just start at the beginning, then? I’m not—I’m not a Resistance hero,” Rey says, her smile faltering. “I’m not interesting. Not like when you and Jessika and Snap and them talk at meals.”

“You _are_ a Resistance hero,” Poe corrects her. “A bigger one than Jessika or Snap or any of them. Maybe equal to me,” he blusters, but he winks to show her he knows it’s a lie. Her cheeks go a little pink, just at the apples, and Poe gentles. “Rey, no matter what you say, I think you’re interesting. ‘Cause I want to know you. That’s all.”

“There was a fight,” Rey says. “Just before I met Finn. My—the junk boss, Unkar Plutt, he runs Niima Outpost, he sent two enforcers after me to get Beebee-Ate. I didn’t know at the time, but obviously the First Order already had word out that they wanted it. I just thought… he wanted something I loved. Something I wouldn’t give him. He could be like that.

“So they threw a sack over Beebee and it was two on one, but that’s nothing, really. So I fought them off and got the sack off Beebee and it saw Finn. I guess… he wanted Beebee-Ate, too, or… I guess maybe he wanted to help me. Knowing Finn. Um, but Beebee recognized your jacket and told me there was a thief in our midst and I’d already had someone try to take it once, so. I wasn’t going to let Finn take it, either.”

“Poor Finn,” Poe says, smiling down at Finn’s face. He fades, a bit. “I should have looked harder for him in the desert. He saved my life and I left him in the Goazon Badlands.”

“I’m amazed either of you survived,” Rey says. “Why was Beebee alone on Jakku in the first place?”

“There was a fight,” Poe says simply. “Beebee-Ate and I were in Tuanul Village. In the Kelvin Ravine. That’s where we found the map to Luke.” He sighs, slumps in the uncomfortable chair, rubs his fingers through his hair. The lump on the side of his head from Hux’s men still hurts when he presses down. “But I wasn’t fast enough. I knew I would die, but the map was more important and—well. You’ve met Beebee-Ate. I could save it, too. Save them both.”

“But you didn’t die. Because of Finn.”

“Because of Finn,” Poe agrees. He swallows, touches the back of Finn’s wrist, feels the muscle and tendon and bone there. The humanity. “I, uh. Yeah. By the time he found me, I didn’t really… I knew I was going to be killed. And I wanted it to be sooner. Rather than later. When he showed up, that’s what I thought he was there to do.”

“Kill you?”

Poe nods. Just barely. “I thought they’d been going for days. When I got back here, Kalonia told me it was only Benduday.” He laughs because he has no choice, a rough exhale, a bubble of… feeling that he doesn’t want to examine. “But I guess it was just a day after we left Tuanul. That’s—Kylo Ren. Took me. On Tuanul.” He swallows again, and looks up at Rey, whose face has shuttered closed as she watches him, fingers still pale against Finn’s shoulder. “Like he took you.”

“And Finn saved me, too.”

“He did,” Poe agrees. He looks back to Finn’s face. “He’s a good man.”

“Even if he is a coat-thief.” Rey’s fingers are visibly callused against the side of Finn’s soft cheek where black fuzz is just barely growing in patchily like he’s even younger than Poe thought. Her fingernails are short and jagged, ripped and bitten down to the quick in a rough way that makes Poe want to wince.

“Did Beebee-Ate really zap him?”

Rey laughs at that again and the hurt of the moment is broken: they’re back on safe ground. BB-8 and adventure and the start of a friendship that will only grow.

It will.

“Yes, twice. It’s a feisty little thing. You should have heard the names it called the Teedo who tried to kidnap it.”

“Oh, no,” Poe groans, and he looks around the corner of the medbay to where BB-8 is rolling along beneath the durachrome countertop to examine—something. “Buddy! Were you taunting your kidnapper?”

[Like Friend-Poe], BB-8 confirms. [I was brave like you! Even though the Bad Teedo had a trap-net, I did not go down easy. No, no.]

Poe has never heard quite so much bravado and self-satisfaction in those little beeps. Rey raises her eyebrow at him, but all he can do is groan and roll his eyes. BB-8 weaves like a little jig as it rolls over to bump first Rey, then Poe.

[Friend-Poe! It is nearing 0200 hours; you have a scheduled meeting in the War Room with Designations: General Organa, Admiral Ackbar, Major Ematt, Major Brance, Admiral Statura, and Friend-Kun.] BB-8 looks up at him with its big black eye and rubs against his calf. [Your average foot speed indicates that you may be late to the meeting if you do not leave now.]

Poe touches BB-8’s dome. “Thanks, pal.” He looks across the expanse of Finn towards Rey. “You okay?”

Rey tears her eyes from Finn’s face and looks over to Poe. She smiles, although it’s sad. “Yeah. Er, listen—I was thinking I might do some upgrades on the Falcon this afternoon, if Chewie lets me. But I don’t have my repair kit?”

“Oh,” says Poe, “Yeah, sure, go ahead and use mine. Pava or someone can show you where it is.” He stands, because BB-8’s friendly calf-rubbing has become a fairly panicked push towards the doors. “I’ll probably see you out there. Remind me that I have a question for you about ionizing fuel injectors! Beebee-Ate, relax, I’m going…”

The ranked command meeting is painfully indecisive. There still is no consensus about moving locations. There’s still no news reaching any of their sources about the actions of a wounded First Order. There still isn’t any word about Kylo Ren’s condition—alive, dead, somewhere floating in between, like Finn. There is a lot of guilt.

Poe just wants to get outside, under the sun, and work on tuning up Black One. When the meeting finally adjourns, he makes a beeline for his quarters for a quick change into his oldest, junkiest jumpsuit and boots. He ties the sleeves around his waist; the sun streaming through the windows is already toasting his skin.

“Commander,” says Theo Meltsa, heading into the med bay just as Poe passes. He’s limping.

“What’d you do, you moof-milker?” Poe likes formalities about as much as the General does.

Meltsa looks at him sidelong. “Dropped a hydrospanner on my foot. I think my toes are broken.” He still looks shifty. “Don’t look at me like that! Ziff whacked himself good on the head with his own S-foil and he’s in there getting treated for concussion.”

Poe’s brow furrows. “What’s up with you guys? Was there a party last night that your ole Commander wasn’t invited to?”

“Nah, never,” Meltsa says. “Just, ah – you’ll see when you get out to the airfield. Watch your own fingers and toes.”

[Friend-Poe, are we under attack?] BB-8 beeps worriedly as it rolls down the hallway beside Poe; he pushes the door open so that Beebee can barrel through ahead of him.

“No, buddy, we’re not under attack,” laughs Poe—but he does knock at the doorframe twice for good luck, an old Rebel Alliance superstition that Mamá taught him. Once for each explosion of a Death Star.

[What causes spontaneous injury in functional humanoids like Designations: Pilot-Meltsa and Pilot-Ziff?]

“I dunno yet, Beebee-Ate, but we’ll find out.”

[I will protect you] BB-8 promises. It brandishes its zapper and rolls on ahead into the hangar. The huge space is loud with echoes of Binary arguing and myriad voices, from the Sullustan clicking of an irked Nien Nunb to Jessika’s ringing laughter at… something, or someone.

“Hey, Dameron.” Snap ducks out from under his T-70’s S-foils to clap Poe on the shoulder. “Good luck in there.”

“What’s going on today?” Poe asks him, catching Snap around the wrist before he can get too far.

Snap’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’ll see.”

Poe heads into the hangar towards Black One, but he swears that as Snap continues the other direction, back towards the base door, he mutters something that sounds like _I’m old and happily married, but shit_.

“Beebee-Ate? Where’d you go, buddy?”

“Hey, it’s Poe! Don’t worry, we’ve got Beebee,” calls Jessika’s voice from the back haul door, where the hangar opens up to let in more sunshine and space for maneuvering ships and cargo. Sure enough, there’s Jessika, flight suit tied around her waist like Poe’s, old dark blue Navy tee on and sleeves pushed up to show off the Dandoranian tattoos that decorate her arms. BB-8 bips at her feet and offers up a soapy sponge. “It’s being very helpful.”

[Thank you, Friend-Jessika!] BB-8 twirls after she takes the sponge, then picks up a second of its own and starts furiously scrubbing at the filthy grille of a YT-model Corellian freighter that makes Poe’s heart speed a bit.

The Millennium Falcon is pulled up into the free space that used to house five X-wing fighters that are never coming home. The freighter looks huge compared to the lithe frames of the remaining X-wings—and ten times in need of some loving care. That ship may be a legend, but it’s also… it hurts Poe to think it, but he must: a piece of junk. The closer Poe gets to the thing, the more he sees differences from the way he remembers it from childhood, when it would take off and land in great roars at the Dameron family landing pad when Leia and her Solo boys would visit.

It looks—well. Like all of them do. Worse for wear. Like the last fifteen years have been harder than whatever came before.

“Beebee’s always helpful,” says Poe, coming up on the ship. There is an incredible amount of damage, rust and sand erosion and the charred reminders of fights against TIEs and plain old blasters. There’s a very strange suction mark on the front viewports. If it weren’t impossible, Poe would think it survived a kiss from a rathtar. “But why are you in charge of the Falcon? Where’s Chewbacca?”

“I’m not,” Jessika says, and there’s a very strange grin on her face. “Rey’s the captain of this vessel, Commander, sir. She’s around back fixing an unspooling in the power converter. Why don’t you go see if she needs some help?”

Poe’s brow furrows. “Alright…”

Jessika claps him on the shoulder as he turns to go. Her hand is sopping wet. “Just do better than Ziff.”

Poe glances down at BB-8, but the droid seems unperturbed, midi-humming to itself as it scrubs away a decade of caked-on sand and silt.

Poe heads around the port side of the Falcon, and he—apparently unlike Ziff—ducks under the damaged X-foil of Red Twelve. There’s no escape pod left on this side of the ship; Poe hid in it once, with Ben, when they were nearly caught playing Dejarik after lights-out. They fell asleep curled up in that pod, and Poe wasn’t allowed to leave the Dameron compound proper for two weeks after they were finally found.

Poe knocks on the durasteel frame to announce himself. “Hey, there. Need any help?”

Rey appears from behind the aft fan, goggles on, welding torch in hand, and says… something.

Poe can’t quite hear her over the pulse in his ears.

Rey is wearing one of Poe’s t-shirts, one of the white t-shirts he’d given her, and it is transparent with sweat and cleaning solution and water and she isn’t wearing anything underneath.

Poe could swear on the Maker that this was a centerfold in one of the holozines everyone in the dormitories would pass around at the Academy.

As he stares, trying and failing to force himself to blink, a bead of sweat rolls down Rey’s neck and bleeds into the neck of the too-thin white shirt. It isn’t tight; the shirt was too small for Poe but Rey was right, he’s much broader than she is. If anything the way that it hangs from her is worse because it emphasizes all of the places that it does touch. It _clings_.

Rey’s chest heaves once as she sighs, then sets down the blowtorch, apparently frustrated with his lack of… doing something. Or not doing something? What did she _say_?

Now that Poe manages to blink, he can’t stop, and he probably looks like a twelve-eyed Crosmellite the first time it crawls out into the sun. It’s not a bad comparison, mutters something loose in Poe’s brain, while the rest of him is still lost in a loop of _Nipples. Again. Gorgeous. Nipples._

He knows exactly what Jessika was grinning about and what Snap was muttering about and why Meltsa and Ziff injured their Force-damned stupid selves.

 _Get it together, Dameron!_ “Sorry, what? I couldn’t hear over the…” Poe gestures vaguely.

“I asked if you could please hold the circuitry bay panels open while I solder in this converter coil,” Rey repeats. “I could do it myself but it’s easier with a third hand.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Got gloves?”

Rey gestures to the open toolkit at her feet – Poe’s toolkit; his memory is coming back now that he has a task besides staring at her. He pulls on the heavy-duty gloves and grabs the safety goggles from Ziff’s kit, left abandoned when the dope brained himself.

“Where do you want me so I’m not in the way?”

Rey secures the goggles over her eyes again. It pushes her hair up into a mushroom shape around her head. “Just stand back enough that I can get in there with the torch. Please.” She adds the last word as an intentional afterthought.

Poe nods and straps Ziff’s goggles onto his face, adjusting the fit band for his ears. He nods to Rey and –

He has to stand up close to be able to reach the panel. His heart does a strange trip-hammer move in his chest, and that’s stupid, because Rey’s not being—not being _sexy_ just because she’s wearing Poe’s t-shirt and nothing underneath, she’s just – she doesn’t know better, and Poe does. Poe knows better than to make this weird, so he won’t. Who cares if a gorgeous girl in a wet t-shirt is going to be pressed up against his front while she fixes the most legendary ship in existence? Not Poe. Poe does not care. He’s helping a friend fix her ship. Ordinary friend, acquaintance, really. Ordinary ship.

Well.

Extraordinary ship. Poe’s thumping heart cannot be lied to about the depth of his admiration for the Millennium Falcon, even if he can swallow his dumb primate lust about Rey in his dumb shirt. It’s just a shirt. He used to wear that shirt all the time. No big deal.

Poe straightens his arms and lifts the huge flap of hull paneling. The hinges move like a dream: Rey has clearly been hard at work on the ship even while away with Luke Skywalker.

It weighs quite a bit more than any of the panels on Black One. “That good?”

Rey looks at his arms appraisingly and nods as she ducks down to slip into the space between Poe’s torso and the opened converter bay of the ship. “Yes. Keep it there.” She pauses. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Poe says, and he hopes that his arms can hold out as long as she’ll need. Her hair smells like sweat and engine oil and the beautiful ozone smell of metal and something gently sweet underneath. She’s not as thin as she was before she left, but it strikes Poe now, with her fitting so neatly between his arms, just how much _narrower_ than him she is. She’s tall for a woman – taller than Jessika or Connix or the General, anyway – but there’s still so much about her that hints at how hard her life has been. She’s little, even though she isn’t that small.

Maybe she’ll agree to eat lunch with him after they finish this part of the ship. BB-8 has been good about herding her to stick to Kalonia’s meal plan.

Rey is deft with the soldering iron and thermocouple like they’re extensions of her own hands. Poe is good at renovating ships – it’s a hobby; that’s one he should remember to tell Dr. Teksa on Centaxday, just to prove that he _has_ a hobby – but the way that Rey swaps the position of the coil between cylinders to decrease the heat on the ship’s ancient connection bundles and decrease resistance on the fuel line operation is genius. Just about everyone Poe has ever known has been a pilot, and he’s never seen anyone arrange a converter panel like this.

“Where’d you learn that?” Poe asks.

“What?”

“Where’d you learn that mod?” Poe yells over the clatter of Jessika and BB-8 fighting over something at the front of the Falcon and the landing of Stiletto Squadron on the tarmac and the loud hiss of the soldering iron on durasteel.

Rey finishes the job and turns around to face Poe. She shoves her goggles up onto her forehead again one-handed. “Just common sense, isn’t it? Some moof-milker was trying to run a freighter this weight on a waste-spark set-up, and then Unkar Plutt put in a compression line, so… if I was gutting the old girl anyway. Might as well fix her up right.”

“Who’s Unkar Plutt?” Poe asks. He doesn’t want to sound stupid in front of her by asking her to clarify how it’s common sense to spread the work of a coil pack over that many thruster pods, because now that she’s called it such, he can see that she’s right. Why aren’t all ships built Rey’s way?

He wants to introduce Rey to Black One as soon as possible. The idea of Rey getting elbow-deep in that beautiful baby is enough to make Poe’s gut feel warm.

Rey’s face, on the other hand, is shuttered hard. “Junkboss at Niima Outpost. On Jakku. Me and Finn and Beebee-Ate stole the Falcon from him.”

Poe’s still caging her up against the side of the ship. He steps back, giving her space, and lets the panel clang closed behind Rey. “Right, yeah. Of course. I was wondering where you found her.”

He steps back and pulls off Ziff’s gloves so that he can run his hand through his sweaty hair. In front of him, Rey’s shirt is still transparent with sweat and touched all over with tiny black star-marks from sparks.

“Plutt stole it off the Irving boys,” Rey says. “Who stole it off Gannis Ducain.”

Poe licks his bottom lip and pointedly does not let his gaze drop down to Rey’s nipples again. He smiles mischievously instead and says, “That’s funny… I pretended to be one of the Irvings once to steal a ship myself.”

Rey turns to lift the panel again and Poe takes the moment’s respite from her chest to rub his hand over his eyes and give himself a judicious slap. _Don’t be a pervert_. Rey marks the coils with some bonding tape tails before shutting the panel properly and turning back to Poe.

She perches on a box and looks up at him. “What ship?”

“The Hevurion Grace.” Poe drags over another box and sits down across from her. He tosses Ziff’s equipment back towards his station. “It’s a Pinnacle-class yacht.”

Rey looks impressed. “Why’d you steal it?”

“General’s orders.” Poe grins. “She wasn’t married to the galaxy’s most legendary smuggler for nothing.”

Rey's eyes dim. It's jarring to be getting used to referring to Han Solo in past tense, and Rey had been there to watch him die.

Poe touches her wrist lightly, just a fleeting comfort so he doesn't scare her off. "Hey, I'm sorry if—"

"No, it's alright," Rey says, and she lifts her chin. "Tell me about… why did the General ask you to steal a yacht? They don't even have defense shields; it'd be terrible to have one in our fleet. I guess you could strip the parts down, but the fuel line on a Pinnacle isn't classed for anything beyond sublight and the thrust nozzles are shoddy."

Poe's eyebrows raise. "You know your ships."

Rey's cheeks tint pink. 

Poe grins at her and flicks her knee lightly with the floppy end of Ziff's borrowed gloves. "I'm impressed." He swallows, and his eyes drift back to her chest for a moment without his permission. "Hey, you wanna head to the mess and get something to eat? I'm hungry, and I'll tell you all about the Grace mission."

"I'm not hungry." Rey glances over to where BB-8 is still scrubbing the Falcon's grille. "But I should try to eat. I don't want Beebee to zap me."

"It wouldn't really," Poe says. "But Kalonia might." He drops Ziff's gloves into the open toolbox and stands to offer Rey his hand. She doesn't take it when she stands, moving like a Tarchalian gazelle, all limbs and stuttering grace. Poe stuffs his hand in his pocket. "I, uh, I think I'm gonna grab a quick sonic before we eat so I don't stink up the mess. I'll meet you there in twenty?"

Rey nods. 

Poe just barely sees her sniff under her arms as he turns around to leave.

He finds her hovering outside of the mess hall doors with her hair in three wet knots and a thick tunic and vest on over her leggings. The guilt in his gut eases that she isn't wearing his shirt anymore. It makes it easier to pretend like his quick wank in the shower wasn't about her, it was just because he hadn't in a few days and it felt good. That's normal. He's getting back to normal. 

"Hey," Poe says, and he touches her elbow lightly. "Were you waiting long?"

Rey glances at him. "No. My window is a bad angle to judge time by. I thought maybe you were already eating."

"Your window – what do you – " Poe cuts himself off. "Did something happen to your wall chrono?"

Rey's chin lifts. "I'm thinking of taking it apart. There's a perfectly good megacaesium oscillator in it that could increase an astromech's homing frequency by about 500 portions. Percent."

Poe smiles and allows for her pride. She may not know how to tell time, but she sure knows engineering—between the ship mechanics and the droid calculations, Rey should probably be in charge of the whole fleet's upkeep.

But, of course, she has to spend most of her time training with Luke. Even the destroyer of the Death Star had to give up being a pilot by the time the war ended. 

"Tell Leia," Poe suggests. "If we've got materials here to do upgrades without dipping into the budget, that'll be a load off her mind. She'll probably kiss you."

Rey goes pink at the tips of her ears and pushes into the mess hall. She heads for the trays and utensils, and her eyes are gluttonous and shiny as she looks over the mostly-full steam trays on the line, but she doesn't move to take anything.

"You okay?" Poe asks. He touches her elbow again, since she looks almost hypnotized by the faint steam rising from a tray of spicy noodles with long, curling purple vegetables. The wraps tied securely around her arms from wrist to tricep are rough, the texture of bandages, but gritty like the sand still hasn’t been cleaned from them completely. Maybe it never will be.

Rey jumps, but she doesn't jerk her arm away. She blinks in a quick flutter of lashes before she says, gruff like she's embarrassed, "I don't know what to pick that won't make me sick. I'm not used to eating so much."

Poe nods. His heart aches in his chest, because he's been on long undercover missions or transgalactic flights where he didn't have food for a day or three, but his mama blessed him with an iron gut and his pop gave it a thorough warranty test with his acidic chirmol and love of takeout Bilbringi pepper pies. "Have you talked to Dr. Kalonia about it?"

"I can manage." Rey does pull her arm away now as she wraps them around herself. "I don't want any more shots."

Poe laughs softly as he agrees. "What about a protein shake? Something with a lot of calories and nutrients but that isn't so big or spicy?"

Rey shrugs one should. "I'll try any kind of food." She smiles brightly. "Even if my mouth disagrees with my stomach, my mouth's closer to my brain."

This time, Poe laughs out loud. Rey's eyes catch the light streaming in through the windows—the light pouring in from right overhead, the way she tells time to high noon—and the colors refract so they look more gray-green than the brown Poe thought they were this morning, while they worked on the ship. 

"I can respect that," Poe says. "Come on, let's find you a shake."

There's a small vibroblender by the caf percolator and the juice dispenser, so it's easy enough to show Rey how much blue milk protein and ettel-nut butter and ice to measure out. She takes a bite out of the peeled, pale embogoyafruit before it goes into the capsule and her eyes light up. It will mask the taste of the blue milk protein, Poe thinks, which somehow always reminds him so much more acutely than blue milk itself that it comes out of a bantha. 

"My mom used to drink protein shakes a lot," Poe explains when the lid goes on and the vibroblender starts to whirr. "Except she'd put in koyo melon from the orchard instead of the ettel-nut butter. During the busy season we'd sell crates of fruit right outside the spaceport, and any of the koyos that were lumpy or bruised went into Mamá's shakes. The koyos had to be pretty, you know? Tourists."

"Pretty things are easier to sell," Rey agrees. "Even if something damaged works just as well."

"That's true," Poe says. The vibroblender stills, and Poe pours the shake out into a temprofoam cup. That way, Rey can take it with her when she leaves. Poe remembers the way Tallie learned to eat again after a dark period when they were cadets, and he wouldn't be surprised if Rey's stomach, too, fills too quickly. He smiles at Rey when he hands her the cup. "Have you ever found something you couldn't fix? I haven't seen the Falcon look so good… ever." 

Rey tips her nose into the cup and sniffs curiously. "Of course. Almost everything was garbage. You had to be good to find useful things."

"Beebee said that you got offered a lot of portions to trade it in." Poe watches Rey's face as she takes an experimental sip of the protein shake. Her eyebrows rise in surprise – maybe at the taste, maybe at the temperature – and a thin blue mustache colors her upper lip. 

"Three months' worth." Rey wipes her mouth on the back of her wrist. "This is good."

"Thanks." Poe dips up a few ladles of the nearest humanoid dish and pours himself a cup of caf to wash it down. They find empty seats near one of the windows streaming in sunlight. "And thank you, again, for helping Beebee."

"Well." Rey shrugs one shoulder. "It was the right thing to do. Tell me about the Pinnacle-class. Why’d you pretend to be one of the _Irving boys_?”

Poe shrugs and grins. He twirls his fork through the greasy red pasta. “First criminals I could think of. I arrested them probably… four times each. They are such bad criminals. It’s _really_ easy to catch them.”

* * *

_Rey kisses her way up the back of Poe’s shoulder blade and over the soft curve to his neck, her hot breath and soft lips nuzzling him awake._

_“Good morning,” she murmurs, and her small hand tip-taps around his waist and down the plane of his belly below his navel to follow the line of dark, coarse hair until she can tuck her fingers under the waistband of his soft sleep pants. “Mmm,” she moans, teeth tugging at his earlobe playfully. “A very good morning.”_

_She wraps her hand around his cock still inside his pajamas and under the blankets, the whole morning very dark and soft and made of feeling. The calluses on her palm seem to fit him perfectly, tightening her grip just right and making Poe rock against her wrist and fingers as she laves her hand in a circle over the fat, sensitive head to gather up a slick of precome for the slide back down again to the root._

Poe moans into the feeling. _Rey’s hand is so warm, the pressure perfect._

_“I dreamed about this cock while you were gone,” Rey murmurs. “I touched myself thinking about it. But I knew you’d come back for me.” She kisses his ear. “My brave pilot.” Her teeth raise goosebumps down Poe’s neck and his nipples pebble up. “You always come back for me.”_

_Her thumb draws down over the thrumming vein along his cock and Poe grunts. “Maybe I’ll try sucking it later,” Rey muses, and Poe’s face flushes icy-hot. “But that’s not what I want right now.” Her mouth is soft and warm and promising when she kisses the back of Poe’s neck. “Just sit back and relax.”_

_Poe feels like he’s still moving in a dream, so warm and comfortable and sleepy in a bed that smells like Rey’s hair and his own heady sleep-smell, as familiar as anything has ever been. He pushes his sleeping pants down to his knees and under the sheets, his toes flex to pull them the rest of the way off. His legs are still hidden under the orange blankets, warm and cocooned away._

_Rey doesn’t still doesn’t face him as she moves over his lap. Her hair hangs loose down to only just past her shoulders, mussed and sticking up at the cowlick in back from Poe’s pillows, and he reaches up to smooth it down gently, letting his hands trace the line along down her neck and to her shoulders, the long curve of her back._

_She’s wearing that damn white t-shirt, Poe’s t-shirt, and it doesn’t reach further than halfway down her ass. He can see the cute round of it below the hem, the intimate way it connects to her strong thighs. It still_ clings _._

_Poe can hear the wet sound of her fingers dipping into herself, and he wishes he could see. Maybe later. He sweeps her hair over one shoulder so that he can gently tug the neck of the white t-shirt aside enough to kiss the freckled place where her neck becomes her shoulder, and Rey rewards him with a happy moan and a lean back into his chest._

_Rey’s sticky fingers wrap around the base of Poe’s cock to hold it still, and then there is just_ warmth _and_ wet _and the grasping flicker-flutters of her insides as Rey sinks down onto Poe in one smooth roll like she’s done this a thousand times._

_“Oh,” Rey breathes. “I’ve needed this.”_

_She rocks slightly, circling and settling, making little throaty noises that send jolts of heat up Poe’s spine. He pushes his hands under the thin material of her t-shirt and runs his palms up the length of her back, feeling old scars and soft skin and strong muscles and less bone than he was afraid he would find under his fingertips. She is blazing warm, the temperature of sleep, still, and the dust-sweat scent of her is strong in Poe’s nose as he tips his face into her hair._

_Rey’s thighs squeeze against the sides of Poe’s as she lifts herself up and starts to fuck him in earnest. It’s still slow and syrupy, more feeling than frenzy, but Poe still bites a toothed curse into the back of her head as she pulls almost all the way off of him so that the ridge of his head is teased with sucking-hot kisses from her inner lips as she bounces just an inch at a time, on and off, on and off._

_“I like this part,” Rey explains in a deeper voice than before, pulling off just to roll down onto the head again. “When you just open me up. I get so excited to be full of you.”_

_“Fuck,” Poe mutters into her hair again. Under the blankets, his ankles flex and his toes crack, all of him tingly and singing. “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”_

_Rey finally slides down, down, down again, taking him deeper than before, her bum settling contentedly against his hips and thighs as she curves back to rest her head on his shoulder. Poe trails his fingers around the cage of her ribs and tickles her a little just because he can—and wants to feel the way it makes her squirm on top of him, all around him—until he can cup her breasts under the shirt, too._

_“You,” Rey says, matter-of-fact, her eyes closed as Poe’s thumbs finally get to sweep across her nipples. She moans high in her throat as Poe runs his thumbnails over the puffy tips to make them stand out more, sensitive and fat and round for him to play with as she circles her hips to take him in up, down, around, up, down around._

_“Me, huh?” Poe breathes against her ear. Her eyes are closed, every line of her body open and trusting in his arms. “I bet you’ve learned a lot from my mouth.”_

_“Mm,” Rey agrees. “I expect you to clean me up after this. You and your smart mouth.”_

_Poe’s cock jolts at that, and he lifts his hips to help push up into Rey at a better angle, a little harder, even if they’re still moving slow and lazy to draw it out and build and build. Rey arches, her chest pressing up into his hands as one of her arms drapes up to frame her face as she winds her fingers through Poe’s messy morning curls and scratches just right._

_Poe is going to come. He can feel it hot in his groin, between his thighs, in the way his heartbeat speeds up fast under his ribs. He keeps tugging lightly at one of Rey’s nipples, rolling it sweetly under his knuckles, but he wants—he needs—to get his other hand down to where they’re rocking together so he can feel out how close and wet she is and help her along, too._

_Under the thin white t-shirt, Poe’s hand caresses down across Rey’s ribs._

_And over the warm, firm curve of a belly thick with Poe’s baby, just big enough that he can feel the taut new stretch of her hot skin and the new weight lying cradled between her hipbones._

“ _Shit_ ,” Poe hisses, and then his mouth is full of sweaty blankets and fiberfill because of course, of course he’s fucking alone in his bed and he comes hard and fast and sharp against the mattress.

Once he catches his breath, Poe grunts and rolls over, forearm over his eyes. 

Not again.

Something _broke_ , that afternoon when he borrowed the gabazol tablets, some dam cracked open and now he can't seem to just _stop fucking dreaming about Rey that way_ , and it's embarrassing even though no one knows and shameful even though Poe doesn't think that sex is something to be ashamed of and it's just… inconvenient. He stopped taking the sleeping pills last week to try and head off the nocturnal emissions, but apparently it wasn't the no-goes after all.

 _Apparently_ he's just a kriffing teenager again. He should check for zits in the mirror and wait for his kriffing voice to crack.

Poe opens one eye. Rain pelts the narrow window overhead in fat gray streaks. They cut through the grime of exhaust-ash and black dirt in a way that just makes Poe more tired.

It's Centaxday. He has to see Dr. Teksa this afternoon.

Poe grunts again.

If his sheets weren't so _sticky_ , he would burrow down into the bed and pretend like he never heard his alarm.

But they are sticky, and he can't run away from his life. 

Poe opens the other eye and peeks over his arm at the chrono on the wall.

0532.

At least this time, his stupid penis let him sleep through most of the night. His alarms will ring in half an hour anyway, so he might as well get up. An extra cup of caf won't kill him before he meets the new recruits with Snap and they start a run of dive-drills.

A crackle of lightning rumbles overhead like the entire fleet taking off at once.

Yes.

In this weather, an extra cup of caf.

By the time the dive-drills are done and Poe wades back to the base, hair sopping wet, he's had six cups of caf and still can't stop yawning. He sloshes into the med bay and TX-025 bustles over with an instant-heat blanket, beeping about [germs!] and [chills!] and the danger of the humanoid common cold to beings without self-regulating temperature. 

Poe wears the thermal blanket like a cape when he knocks on Dr. Teksa's door, and she laughs warmly when she ushers him inside.

"Thanks," Poe says, and he tries to swallow another yawn. "I don't know how I got so soaked just running inside from the hangar."

Dr. Teksa smiles as she passes Poe a mug of steaming purple tea. “How is your squad getting on now?”

“I think we’re pretty good.” Poe takes a sip of the tea and makes a face at the sharp bitterness. “Sugar?”

“Told you.” Dr. Teksa laughs a little as she hands over a small canister with fluted white detailing.

Poe smiles back, and he stirs a healthy spoonful of sugar into the tea. The color changes instantly from dark purple to bright teal. “Impressive.” He takes a sip, and now he can taste the hint of mint that he’d smelled when he opened the office door. “Uh, anyway, the squadron… we’re getting the new formations set, and the ships are all repaired now. Bastian's back -- well, you know, you're the one who finally signed off on him getting off the ground.”

Dr. Teksa blinks, but gives no indication that she’s seen Bastian. It’s obvious, since she’s the only therapist on base, but Poe can appreciate her sense of discretion.

“I mean, we’re down numbers. There’ll be a lot of rookies coming in who’ll need to be whipped into shape fast. And I’m sure there's stuff my crew don't tell their commanding officer.” Poe sets the tea down on the little table and crosses his ankle over his knee. “I'm closer to some than others.”

“Who would you say you’re closest to right now?”

Poe blows a long breath out through his teeth. Who _is_ he closest to now? That answer used to be so easy. But it’s been a long few months.

“Beebee-Ate, since it’s my astro. Just about the only time we’re apart is when I’m here. You don’t offer pilot-droid couples therapy, do you?”

Dr. Teksa just looks flatly at him over the tops of her spectacles. “All right, do we need to acknowledge that relationships with droids are a bit different from relationships with organics?”

“No.” Poe scratches his chin. “I’m just being – nothing. Right. Uh... who’m I closest to right now. Probably Karé. Um, that's Commander Kun, if you haven't met her yet. She hasn’t mentioned coming in, but she… should. If she hasn’t. I’m sure Bastian’s mentioned her; they were in a triad with Iolo. She’s messed up about – well, anyway. I’m sure you know.”

Dr. Teksa sips her tea and neither confirms nor denies whether she’s seen Karé. “So Commander Kun is your closest friend on Base? You haven’t been here that long, and you’ve spent a lot of time out on missions… how’d you meet?”

Poe’s stomach sinks. Maybe it’s the tea. “She was also in my original squadron. You probably know about that, though. It's in my file. We came here together. Known each other for… phew, twenty years? I have to be her friend; she’s got too much blackmail material to fall out with Karé.” He shudders theatrically. “She’s seen my baby holos. Bathtime.”

Dr. Teksa laughs like that. She has a good laugh, Poe thinks – it seems genuine, even though he’s sure she’s worked at making it full like that to put people more at ease.

Even knowing that, or suspecting it… it works.

“We’ve just been tight for a long time.” He shrugs. “Been through a lot together. It’s – it’s in your files. Or she’s told you.”

“Your file is quite extensive,” Dr. Teksa says, “But it can't tell me everything. I'd like to hear about your friends and experiences in your own words.”

Poe takes another sip of his tea, almost lukewarm now, and swaps the cross of his legs.

It might be okay – talking about what happened. About the patrol past OR-Kappa-2722, about how it became Starkiller Base. That quadrant of space took _everything_ from Poe, didn’t it, and he got to destroy it. Blew the whole system away with the power of that nova. When Snap did a recon after the dust settled, all that was left out there was a black hole from the collapsed gravity. Still sucking up light.

But that feels okay. It feels right, that nothing can ever be there again. Not after Muran. Not after Kylo Ren. Not after Han Solo. That place doesn’t deserve to be able to be resettled or repaired. It can just… be.

It might be safe to talk about, now that they’re all safe from anyone else being lost there.

Still, Poe sips the tea and raises an eyebrow. It _might_ be safe, but ‘safe’ and ‘comfortable’ are not the same thing. Stall. Stall like a podracer in third gear. “Is my file extensive in a good way or a bad way?”

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Teksa laughs again and shakes her head. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you.”

“Ah, I know it's all good stuff.” Poe gives her a winning grin. But he folds his second leg up onto the sofa so that he’s sitting small, elbows on his knees. He circles one hand around his opposite wrist, tight, and feels his pulse under his fingers. It’s steady. Safe.

It’s alright when Dr. Teksa sets down her teacup, picks up her datapad, and says, “A teacher of mine once said that everyone's the expert on their own life. So, let’s start talking a little less about your duties here day-to-day and more about your life. Let’s just pretend your file doesn't even exist.” She looks so gentle and encouraging when she says, “Tell me about your original squadron. You must have been close, to all defect together.”

It’s time. And it’s okay. Poe looks up at the thin sliver of transparisteel above Dr. Teksa’s desk, and outside, the sun is shining. The walls shake with the rumbling take-off of one of Teffer’s training runs with the new recruits. Outside of Dr. Teksa’s door, there’s a clatter and a loud _beep!_ from the med bay as one of the T-X droids drops medical waste into the incinerator chute.

Poe is safe, for the moment. As safe as he can be on a Resistance base during an active war, anyway.

He can do this. Start simple. “Graduated the Academy in AGE 20, I was top of the class but we were all pretty close... four of us, in my squadron, the top four in the class. That was um… the top two percentile, I guess, whatever that means. Nobody else is, uh, they’re all younger or older here.” He pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, still clutching his wrist tight. Poe rests his chin on his knees. “When we were Privates we did peacekeeping runs over some of the old Cinder planets -- just really routine stuff. Um... and then I was made captain and everyone else advanced to lieutenant and we got our own trade lane patrol route. A little less boring, some skirmishes with pirates and whatnot. And uh...”

Poe’s pulse jumps under his thumb. Strong, and fast. His chest aches. Something’s not right in his stomach; maybe the tea?

Poe swallows. “And then three of us defected together. Came here.”

Dr. Teksa’s eyes are very serious and understanding. “What led you to defect?”

That must be in Poe’s file. Leia knows all this; knows as much as Poe would be willing to tell anyone in the capacity of the rank and file. And a little more. She knows him as much as anyone who’s sat across from her at a Life Day banquet table and shared a laugh and goals and –

She came to find him and recruit him out from under the New Republic’s nose after OR-Kappa-2722. She’s always known. And maybe she used it to her own advantage, knowing what would make Poe fight harder – what Poe’s always been fighting for. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Was it a group decision?” Asks Dr. Teksa gently. “Or were some of you just following the others out of friendship, loyalty?”

Poe coughs, his throat very dry. He bites at the inside of his top lip, scrapes it over the sharp edges of his bottom teeth. “We discovered Starkiller Base. We didn't know that's what it was at the time. But that's what it was.”

There’s a long silence, and Poe is grateful for it. She doesn’t push, doesn’t ask for him to rush the story. It’s a hard one to tell – trying to make something like that day make sense. Any battle story is hard to suss out afterwards; Poe hates filling out his reports and debriefings as much as anyone. But battles in the actual course of the war… he can understand where they came from. How he ended up there. There’s a rhyme and a reason to the presence of the TIEs when he goes flying into First Order space. When he lost half of his pilots, _half of his pilots_ , at Starkiller Base, the loss was unimaginable… but not unexpected. It’s an ache. It’s not a wound. It’s not – it wasn’t a sudden stab in the dark. Of course it was hard, but it was the kind of hard that he himself is hardened against by now.

There are certain kinds of loss that Poe is accustomed to, for better or worse. But that doesn’t make the other pains hurt less.

He closes his eyes and nestles his chin against his knee. His pulse thumps under his thumb. _Alive, alive, alive_.

“It kind of happened in two parts. The supply chain and then the construction. First time was four of us in T-85s up against eight TIEs, a coupla personnel transport shuttles. And it was... just a routine patrol, you know? We'd all just been joking on the comms and then… _bam_. Battle out of nowhere. Everybody did their best. We – I did my best.” He coughs again. Opens his eyes to look at Dr. Teksa. “I think. I don’t think I could have done more than… I’ve played it over and over. And I think I did everything I could.”

“Would you like some water?” Dr. Teksa asks after there’s another silence. “Or more tea? Do you just need a minute?”

“Water would be nice,” Poe says. “Thanks.”

She smiles at him and unscrews the lid from a bottle before passing it over to him. Poe drinks half of it, grateful for the cold more than anything else. It sloshes in his stomach once it hits.

“So you were ambushed. You and Commander Kun and your two squadmates. Am I understanding you?”

Poe nods. “Yes. I guess. They just built it up so _fast_. We’d done that patrol two weeks before and there was nothing there, just a big hunk of ice pretending to be a planet, you know? Like Hoth. Without the wampas. It should have been fine. A blue milk run.” He scrubs his hands through his hair. “Nothing came up on the scanners. That’s what still – someone kriffing tampered with those scanners. They had to. Someone in the Navy made sure that nothing the First Order was doing would show up until it was too late. I’m sure of it. I’m _sure_ of it.”

“You may well be right,” Dr. Teksa says, nodding. “We all know that many from within the New Republic Senate and the military command structure were involved with the rise of the First Order, whether overtly or covertly. But that is not your responsibility to prove, Poe. You’re a pilot, and you have to trust your intel. You did not do anything wrong.”

“I know.” Poe doesn’t mean to snap; he doesn’t. “That’s what makes me angry.” He closes his eyes and focuses on his pulse again, breathing carefully until it slows again. “Sorry.”

“That’s fine, Poe. If you’re angry, you can go ahead and be angry here. Or sad. Or afraid. That’s all okay.”

Poe doesn’t say anything, because of course she’ll say that; it’s her job. And it’s not like he thinks feeling things is bad. But she still has that datapad, and she still reports to the General.

Dr. Teksa swipes at something on the datapad and sets it aside. Poe watches it for a moment where it sits on the desktop, but it doesn’t blink. She’s turned it off.

“You lost a party member, if my math's correct. Four T-85s but only three of you together defected.” Dr. Teksa studies Poe’s face with her big gray eyes even bigger behind the lenses of her glasses. “Who did you lose, Poe?”

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

“Rapier Four.” Poe closes his eyes and breathes and pictures Muran, the way he looked in the dream, just as he did in life. With so much brightness and love in his eyes. And all those shared years. And forgiveness for not being fast enough. “Iaret Muran.”

Dr. Teksa smiles at Poe, lips closed, nodding. She turns to her desk to pour another cup of hot tea to hold between her palms and offers the kettle to Poe. He shakes his head. Jiggles the half-empty water bottle.

“Tell me about Iaret Muran.”

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

He told Finn about Muran after his first session – after the dream. Something deeper and more personal than he ever plans on telling Dr. Teksa about him, either, because Finn deserved that. For protecting Rey and understanding loyalty and saving Poe, and all of the things that Muran himself would have adored Finn for. Poe can tell Dr. Teksa the other things, the basics, enough to understand – what happened. She can know the same sketch that Leia learned as she watched Poe’s life from the sidelines.

Start small. Keep breathing. It’s okay. “He was a really good pilot,” says Poe softly. He uncaps the water again and screws the cap back on. _Muran, eject!_ “The only one on my squadron who didn't constantly talk shit while we were working. He was... he was steady, you know. Calm. Calming. A little shy. He would've been top of our class if he thought a little less in the air.” _Muran, eject!_ “Beat me on all of the academic stuff, but he wasn't – he wasn't as fast.” _Muran, eject!_ “He was the careful one.”

And he was. He _was_. He died because of it, because Iolo was reckless and instinctual and flew high to miss the debris, and Muran went by the book and banked low.

“It sounds like you admired him.”

What can Poe say? Yes, he admired Muran. Admired how smart he was, the way he could debate anyone – academic or practical flight instructor – about multivariable calculus continuity and nine times out of ten, Muran was right. And when he wasn’t, his questions were so thoughtful, he was always so thoughtful. He knew just what to say to people, always, always. Poe admired the care that he took with all of his belongings, how well he maintained BB-16, the poor little droid, blown to smithereens right alongside Rapier Four –

“How do you think he felt about you?”

Dr. Teksa’s face changes, just slightly, and Poe knows with a jump in his pulse beneath the tight grip of his hand that she’s figured him out. “You were very close to Iaret Muran, weren't you.”

“He was the love of my life.” Poe’s feet both hit the floor at the same time and he digs the heels of his hands into the couch cushions at his sides. All of his limbs exploded outwards at once. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Poe unclenches his left hand and notices that the black spaces under his fingernails have gone numb. He sniffs and rubs his hand hard over his face. “It's -- there were just... I'd never seen a TIE up close. Outside of a museum, or… whatever. They're so fast.”

Rey said at breakfast the other day that she’s working on reconfiguring an ionized fuel injector to experiment with boosted fuel in a hyperspace-capable engine. TIEs are fast, but Poe could be faster. The whole Resistance could be faster.

They’ll have to be.

“You were fortunate to make it out alive yourself,” says Dr. Teksa. “You were outnumbered, no official support. You were able to make it home to report what had happened. You were lucky.”

Pops has said that before. Leia. Karé, Iolo. BB-8. It’s not like Poe hasn’t been told a thousand times that he could have died that day, too. But he’s a pilot. He could die any day.

It might not have been so bad, really, if it had been then. It’s not something that Poe actively _wants_ – as much as Leia thinks he’s reckless sometimes and he admittedly runs headfirst into danger because _that’s his job_ , he doesn’t want to die. He’s glad he didn’t. But it still –

“Yeah,” Poe agrees quietly. “I guess. Yes.”

Dr. Teksa nods. “But you lost the person closest to you.”

“Yes.” Poe swallows and the familiar anger burns in his chest again as his jaw tenses and his face goes hard. “And I reported what we found up the chain of command and they didn't care. No, they – it was more than them not caring, it was corruption. The whole Navy was in the First Order's _kriffing_ pocket.” He pauses. “Sorry.”

“I understand.” Dr. Teksa still doesn’t touch the datapad, and she moves around the desk to sit in front of it, closer to Poe. She offers him a box of tissue, but Poe shakes his head. He isn’t going to cry. He might be all cried out, at least for the time being. He hasn’t cried over Muran in a while. “You know that you aren’t alone in recognizing that, right? It’s a common thread in the experiences that have brought people to the Resistance, a distrust of the Senate and the New Republic military.” She pauses. “Do you think that in a way, you're here to avenge Muran?”

Poe unscrews and rescrews the water bottle’s lid a few times. “I don't know if I'd call it revenge. I'm – not that kinda person. Angry like that.” He scratches his chin. The ache in his chest still holds tight, like a malfunctioning grav pump. “I mean, of course I’m angry, but I’m not out there to hurt anyone. I can, if I have to,” he adds quickly, because he doesn’t want Leia to get a report that he’s trigger-shy. “But that’s not what gets me out of bed every day and into the cockpit.”

Dr. Teksa smiles gently. “That's reassuring to hear. Although sometimes when we're angry, we don't lash out and hurt others, you know, Poe. We turn it inward, and sometimes that means that we hurt ourselves.”

“Okay.” Poe stares at her. “I don’t. I’m not hurting myself.”

“I know that physically, you’re healthy. A little sleep-deprived, perhaps.” She raises her eyebrows meaningfully at Poe. “But that’s not necessarily what I mean. Do you think that you might have defected to the Resistance because you knew that it put a target on you in the eyes of the First Order? It was a dangerous choice, and you made it in the aftermath of seeing that danger very intimately.”

Pops had asked the same thing after Muran’s memorial service. There was no body, every bit of Muran ash, but there was a military honors ceremony on Hosnian II. Muran’s fathers were given a New Republic flag folded into a sharp triangle, and Poe wore his dress uniform for the last time. Kes flew out for moral support and commiseration, and afterwards as Poe packed up the last of his belongings, he’d asked, _are you trying to get yourself killed, too?_

It was a fair question. First Ben. Then Muran. The Hosnian system. Han. The First Order takes, and takes, and takes, and Poe could have stayed with the Navy and flown useless patrols day after day instead of going into the belly of the beast to face them head-on. He never would have been on Jakku. He never would have been strapped into that chair.

He still hasn’t told Pops about that.

“I don’t think so,” he says, though, and he thinks it’s honest. “I think the First Order is wrong. I think that some of the people in the Senate and the Navy were corrupt and did some bad things. But I don't go out on missions thinking about getting back at any one person, or anything.” No matter how much that black-and-chrome mask blares itself through Poe’s thoughts as he says it.

“That’s very level-headed, Poe. I can tell that you’ve thought a lot about it, even if you haven’t talked about it much.” Dr. Teksa touches up her tea with a little more water, a spoonful of sugar, and asks, “How long has it been since you lost Muran?”

“Almost a Standard,” Poe says, and – he’s never thought about it being that long. He’s been so busy for so long that time passed without him needing to notice.

And that… maybe that was on purpose.

“You said you’re still very close with Karé Kun? What about the fourth in your old squadron?”

“That was Iolo. There's just Karé and me left now.”

Dr. Teksa sits back in her chair and her eyes are soft, commiserating, behind her glasses. “I didn’t realize that he was the same person. What was it like to lose another squad mate so soon after losing the first?”

“It was harder on Karé than me,” Poe says. They still haven’t talked about it much, but it has to be true. Muran was Poe’s pain, and Iolo Karé’s. “Um... so I guess we have that in common now. Losing a partner, I mean. She's still taking it hard. She was injured and couldn't take part in the battle, so she feels guilty even though she shouldn't. I think she shouldn't, anyway.”

Dr. Teksa adjusts her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “Why not?”

Poe shrugs and scratches the underside of his chin. He missed a spot shaving this morning. “She got injured because we don't have the same kind of ships, or budget, or supplies that we used to, and her T-67 just crapped out on her and she crashed. And we didn't have a bacta immersion pod to heal her broken ankle. She's still got a duraplast cast on and it's been weeks.” He shakes his head. “It's ridiculous.”

“Did having better resources when you were in the Navy make it harder on you when you lost Muran?”

“Because it was just pilot error?” Poe asks, and his voice cracks. “Command error?”

“No, Poe. Is that what you think?”

Poe shrugs. “I was commanding officer. That’s just a fact. My call led to his death. Another fact. Same thing happened to Iolo.” He swallows. Coughs. Swallows again. Something burns sticky-sweet at the base of his throat like a gag. “It was going to be awful either way. It's not easy to lose people, but it's... it's what happens at war.” He closes his eyes against the memory of Major Deso handing Poe the debriefing forms across the desk like Muran was any other loss, like he was a _training dummy_. “I just wanted them to acknowledge that we were _at war_.”

“Do you feel like the genocide of the Hosnian system was justified because of their apathy?”

“What?” Poe draws back. “No! Are there people here who think that?” He shakes his head. “I – no, it makes it even worse.”

“I can’t say whether anyone believes that, explicitly, but I think it would be a natural response to the kind of dismissal you received in the face of your trauma,” Dr. Teksa says delicately. “If you felt a sense of relief when certain people who had undermined your loss were killed, for example, or any painful reminders of your past.”

“No,” Poe says. “No, there is definitely no sense of relief that twelve billion beings were killed and the home that I shared with Muran is gone. Iolo’s brothers and sisters were all on Hosnian Prime working in the urban center, and… no. I lost a lot of friends that day.”

“How do you deal with the knowledge that you will likely lose more friends before this war is over?”

Poe pulls one knee up to his chest again and wraps his arm around it. He shrugs even as he hides behind himself. “I'm just gonna work my hardest to make that number as small as it can be, ma'am.”

Dr. Teksa smiles and turns to take up the datapad again. It turns on with a soft _bloop_ and a blue glow. “I know, Commander Dameron. So: when you lost the man you loved, you made a major life change by defecting from the Navy to come here. How do you feel about the very likely chance that you'll fall in love again someday?”

“Um.” Poe is thrown by the shift and _is not thinking of Rey_. “I've um, never thought about it. I've been kinda busy trying to help save the galaxy, but I guess…” The way that Rey laughed at BB-8’s story about Maz and the pirates pushes at Poe’s lungs. “My mind is open.” He sets his feet flat on the floor again and picks up the now-cold cup of tea. “Do you have to know about that for mission clearance stuff?”

“I do,” Dr. Teksa says apologetically. “Your openness tells me that you've been able to move on from what's undeniably a traumatic experience – the death of a partner – and that you see yourself as having a future. That more than anything else tells me that you aren’t motivated solely by revenge.”

“Well, you're supposed to move on, aren't you? You have to find something to do and just do it. I learned that from my dad after he lost my mom.” It was one of the first lessons that any child of the Rebel Alliance learned: you lose people. And you keep going. There are bigger things than your heart at play in the galaxy. “I mean, look at the General. I don't think I've seen her stop for a day, ever.”

Dr. Teksa’s lekku sway behind her, a quick brush right and then left. “And that's a good thing?”

Poe nods and makes a mental note to have Beebee do a datasearch on Ryl. “Nothing's broken her. I think that's a good thing.”

“What do you think the difference is between people who are and aren't ‘broken’?” Dr. Teksa studies Poe’s face and he swallows, because – well, in retrospect, that was a dumb thing to say. Now she’s going to think that he thinks he’s _broken_ somehow, and that will bring up more than Muran.

Poe licks his lip. “I've never tried to put it into words like that, but I think people who are broken... I think they stop caring. And they stop trying to do good. Like I think that if the histories are right, then Darth Vader was broken, right? And I think the First Order is full of broken people.”

“That’s interesting. What do you think broken people stop caring about? Or, I suppose, what does the First Order not care about?”

“Anything,” says Poe.

“So you don’t think that anyone in the First Order believes that they’re fighting _for_ something?”

“I honestly don’t know. Finn – ” Poe catches his breath and runs his hand through his hair to rumple it thoughtfully. “Finn didn’t believe in what the First Order asked the stormtroopers to do. That’s why he’s here. He got something to fight for when he left, you know?”

“Hmm,” hums Dr. Teksa. “What are you fighting for, Poe?”

“Freedom and justice and democracy and beings not being in pain. And... my squad and BB-8. And I think that all beings should be allowed to have a voice and that everyone should have an equal shot at happiness.” Poe shrugs. “I want a galaxy that’s better for my children someday than what we have now. Just like the Rebel Alliance fought for for me. And, you know, I did have a good childhood and from what my Pops’s told me about what it was like to grow up under the Empire, you know… it improved. But it could be better. And if we stop the First Order, then it will be. That’s worth fighting for, I think.”

The side of Dr. Teksa’s mouth curls up in a faint smile, and Poe wonders again how a Twi’lek came to this place, this time. Her childhood can’t have been rosy. “Quite. I think we've made some real progress today, Poe. I know it wasn't easy for you to talk about Muran.”

Poe nods and hands her back the almost-empty tea mug. “I hadn't in a long time, but... I told Finn some stuff about him the other day. Even though he couldn't answer, it kind of helped.”

“I'm glad,” she smiles and takes the mug. “Do you think you'd want to try talking about Muran with someone who could answer back?”

“Am I allowed to say ‘not yet’?”

Dr. Teksa’s right lek sweeps towards him. “Of course you are.”

“Then, not yet. Karé is still, you know, and no one else here knew Muran, and I don't feel like anyone else could... I don't want to put that on anyone yet. I can't make any of the people under my command have to take on my – emotions and junk. That's not fair. I talk to Beebee-Ate all the time, though. Does that count?”

Dr. Teksa laughs. “Yes and no. We may need to bring you two in for droid-human couples therapy yet, if you keep this up!” She makes a notation on the datapad. “I think your homework this week is to think of someone who you could talk to about these ‘emotions and junk’ who can talk back. And if that's just me, that's all right. But think about why.”

“Okay.” Poe half-stands. “I can do that.” He reaches towards her to shake hands, and then hesitates. “I did… have a question, before I leave.”

Dr. Teksa looks at the analog clock ticking away on her desk, but then nods. “Of course.”

Poe shoves his hands into his pockets just so he won’t fidget as he asks, “How much stock should I put in, um, dreams? I know that people who are Force-sensitive can have visions in dreams, and things like that, but I'm – not. Not more than anyone else. But I've been having... never mind. Just, do you think that dreams are trying to tell us anything, or are they just rearranging random thoughts and they don't matter?”

“Hmm.” Dr. Teksa leans back in her chair and looks up at Poe, her brows lowered. “Is there any particular reason you’re asking?”

Poe schools his face into something coolly indifferent. Curse his inability to lie. “Nope. Just curious. Intellectual mind, me.”

Dr. Teksa smiles, almost to herself, and then stands to cross to the shelves of holocubes that line one of her walls. She selects one and plugs it into the datapad. The grainy image of a short, thick, smiling humanoid in draping robes like the Jedi beams up from the pad’s face. “Well, let me ask you a question: Are you familiar with sensory deprivation?”

Poe blinks. His heartbeat picks up at the idea of anything detaching his mind from his nerves again, from the sense of being able to control his own body. What _Kylo Ren_ did was the opposite of depriving him his senses, but it still makes his stomach curdle. “Uh, the kind that we did in training back at the Academy for spacewalk repairs, yeah.” He exhales. “You know, like in the EVA suits in the pool.”

“Right, yes, that’s one type. But…” She lifts taps the pad again and the image of the smiling humanoid changes. Now, they wear a boxy helmet over their robes, and Poe cannot tell whether they are smiling. He has to assume not. “Sensory deprivation is also used by some cultures to induce visions.”

Poe nods slowly. “Sounds like the kind of thing Luke Skywalker either does a lot of or none of.”

Dr. Teksa laughs. “A long time ago, the Jedi did indeed study the technique. But… surprisingly, it offered no additional benefit to Force-sensitive individuals. It seemed that they either could channel visions or could not.” She taps the datapad again and the holo plays, short and simple, as she humanoid removes the helmet and begins what looks like a rousing speech in a language that Poe does not know, even as they blink blindly into the light.

“But,” Dr. Teksa continues, “There was an unexpected finding. The most effective practitioners of the technique, that is, those who had the most visions come to fruition, were not especially Force-sensitive. No more than anyone else.” She looks at Poe. “It was hypothesized that by removing all sensory input, sometimes with the aid of certain drugs, for example, these individuals were able to focus on their connection to the Force.”

Poe blinks.

_Those who had the most visions come to fruition._

“So you're saying that I'm a sleep Jedi or something? When I – um, take the sleeping pills?”

“Well, when humans enter the Rapid Eye Movement stage of their sleep cycle, all sensory information from the rest of the body is prevented from reaching the cerebrum, where advanced processing occurs.” She pours a fresh cup of tea, and the spoon clinks gently against the mug as she stirs. “So you tell me.”

Poe takes his hands from his pockets to shrug _comically_ big. “I'm just a sky jockey. I understood the words ‘rapid’ and ‘movement.’”

“Poe, I know you’ve heard of REM sleep – we’ve gone over your sleep regs and reqs enough. So to put it another way, during REM sleep, your body becomes its own sort of sensory deprivation chamber. And it’s entirely possible that without sensory input to process, the connection that you do have to the Force, as a human being, creates its own stimulus.”

Poe sits down on the squashy sofa again, elbows on his knees. “So the Force might be able to just bounce around in here and make me have... visions? Of the future? The real future?” Poe shakes his head and _now is not the time to think about this, about Rey, about whether that means she’ll really – no._ “I don't know, I don't know if they're visions, anyway. They're probably just weird dreams, right?”

Dr. Teksa shrugs, lekku curling, and deactivates the holocube. “I'm afraid I'm not the person who can answer that question. You could try asking Luke, to be sure.”

That is definitely not happening. “But do you think they mean anything? If they're just dreams, I mean,” Poe presses. “Or should I just stop drinking blue milk before bed, you know?”

“Let me ask you this: These dreams. Do they disturb you?”

Poe flushes at the visceral recollection of bone-shivering orgasms and cold, wet sheets all alone. “I... I don't know. They're not bad, or anything.”

“Do you want them to stop?”

 _No._ “I'm not sure.” It would probably be best, it would be – more respectful, and less likely to leave him with a bruised heart when the crush ends in watching the happiest couple in the galaxy reunite when Finn wakes. That’s what Rey deserves, not some lonely pilot putting his misplaced dreams onto her.

“Would you like to tell me about them?”

Poe’s face feels like the surface of a volcanic planet, his cheeks go so hot. “I dunno. They're probably just from the blue milk.” He stands and sticks his hands in his pockets again, shuffling a few steps towards the door. “I just... wondered, anyway. It's not a big deal.”

“Well, it's an easy enough hypothesis to test experimentally, wouldn't you say?” Dr. Teksa smiles. “Lay off the blue milk after sunset for a week?”

Poe smiles thinly. “Yeah, I'll do that for extra credit, since you already gave me my homework.”

“Good. We'll talk next week, then. But if you'd like to talk before then, about these dreams or anything else, my door is always open.”

Poe nods and leaves the little office. He pauses outside of Dr. Teksa’s door and closes his eyes to breathe: in, then out. Again. In. Again, out.

The privacy curtain around Finn’s bed is pulled closed, but the only silhouette behind besides Finn’s stationary profile is Rey, her three distinctive buns showing through the white film as she tilts her face down, closer to Finn’s chest. One of her thin hands comes up and she touches the crown of Finn’s head.

Poe breathes. The med bay is quiet save for the rhythmic beeping of the machines monitoring Finn behind his curtain and the soft servo-whirring of the droids on their rotations. Behind another door, Dr. Kalonia gives a quiet laugh, as though she’s reading an amusing holonovel until the next catastrophe.

Poe watches Rey’s silhouette tilt its head the other direction, her left ear pressing almost to Finn’s mouth. But it doesn’t move. Unlike Poe, she doesn’t speak when she visits him, either.

Poe’s across the bay, pulling Finn’s curtains back to take the empty chair at the far side of his bed before he’s really decided to do it. Rey looks surprised, but not startled or disappointed to see him.

“Hi, Rey,” Poe says, giving her a little smile before he looks down into Finn’s still, peaceful face. “How’s he doing today?”

“Alright, I think.” Rey touches Finn’s head again, gently, just the tips of her fingers. “He isn’t in pain anymore.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Poe doesn’t really know, honestly. By the time his mother didn’t feel any pain, it was too late. Finn doesn’t look like she did, though. He doesn’t even look like he’s been immobile for over a month; he’s as handsome and strapping as he was when they met, his arms still as thick as Poe’s neck and his cheeks flushed with health. After this long being fed through a tube, his only exercise from the droids that stimulate his muscles enough to avoid atrophy, he should look… sick. He should look like a man in a coma. But he doesn’t. If his hair hadn’t grown out longer and his face hadn’t needed that shave for his sparse little beard and mustache last week, it could still be the day he rescued Poe from the First Order.

Rey creases a little furrow between her eyebrows. “I think so.”

“Good,” Poe says. He doesn’t touch Finn, because Rey seems rather possessive of him—and why shouldn’t she be? Finn is hers, and she is his, and that’s just the truth of the galaxy. “He seems a lot better now that you’re back. I bet he’ll wake up any day now.”

“I don’t think so,” Rey says. She smooths her hands over Finn’s thin medical gown to adjust the collar. She sighs, closes her eyes, and tries on a little smile. “But maybe.”

Poe nods, and they’re both silent for a long string of mechanical beeps measuring Finn’s heartbeat. Poe thinks his own is distinctly faster at the moment, with Rey sitting so close. He likes the smell of her, just skin and hair and sweat and plain soap, nothing fancy or fake. She smells like ozone. Like she’s made of atmosphere.

“You should say hello,” Rey says, looking up at Poe. “Tell him you miss him. I’ve told him, but he needs to hear it from you.”

“Hey, there, buddy,” Poe says down to Finn’s peaceful face. “How are you doin’ in there? I hope you’re having good dreams.” He pats Finn’s hand, comforted by the warmth of his skin. It’s still soft, like the droids are taking care to moisturize his skin whenever they wash him up.

“I don’t think he’s dreaming,” Rey says. “He’s very far away.” She lays her hand over Finn’s cheek and leaves it there. “But he’s alright. He’s going to be fine.”

Poe shouldn’t be here. This is Rey’s time with Finn; he can come back later, talk to him about the trip to Takodana and the Niktos’ blockade, or ask him—Poe should tell him that he’s not going to do anything about the dreams. It’s not like Finn could _know_ , but somehow Poe thinks he should. Finn should know that Poe is going to do everything that he can to help Finn get back here for Rey.

“He’s gonna be fine,” Poe agrees. He studies Rey’s profile. The little upturn of her nose. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Why?” Rey creases a little furrow between her eyebrows.

Poe presses his lips together and looks down at his hands, shoring himself up. _Be brave, Dameron._ “Because I’m not sure I’m okay yet, after what happened a few weeks ago. And I got to come home to people I know, right? But you’re in a whole new place. New weirdos like me around. So.” He looks up at her. “Are you okay?”

Rey blinks. She glances towards Dr. Teksa’s door so quickly and surreptitiously that anyone else might have missed it, but Poe just starts to nod.

“Yeah,” Rey says. She still sounds suspicious. “I’m fine. I like it here. And I liked it on the island with Luke, except that—” She cuts herself off with a swallow.

“Except what?”

Rey’s eyes close. “When I was… on Starkiller Base — no, I — when I was young, and until I got here, I used to dream of an island. When I couldn’t sleep. When there wasn’t enough water. It was like, a—a fantasy, that I had, a bit of land surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of drinkable water. I didn’t even know that it would look blue and green and gray, when it’s that deep, I thought it would look brown, like the rivers after a flashflood.” She smiles, and Poe has to smile back until her eyes skitter away and her face falls. “ _He_ pulled it out of my head.”

“And now it doesn’t feel the same,” Poe finishes, quiet. “I know what you mean.”

“I wasn’t sure it was real. When Chewie and I arrived. I thought… that maybe I’d died in the snow after all. Or was still in that chair. And he’d be there.”

"We don't even have any confirmation that he's alive," Poe says, looking away from Finn's placid face to Rey's troubled one. "I mean, it might be bragging, but I did a pretty solid job blowing up that base. He could well be dead."

"He's not." Rey's voice is as quiet as it is sharp and short. "Luke and Leia, the General, I mean, General Organa, they can feel him. Luke said it's like a headache all the time right at the base of his skull."

"Yeah, I could see that," Poe says. He rubs his own hand over his head, fingers pushed through his hair. He'd never felt anything like the pain of Kylo Ren slicing into his mind. Not even being crushed under debris, pounded by shrapnel, pierced with the red light of a blaster bolt could compare. He'd been dizzy, disoriented, exhausted, but something about the presence of that wraith woke him up with a start, like the up-pricked ears of a galezze out in the fields back on Yavin, tempted into the orchard by the sweet scent of the koyo leaves but wary of Poe and his father with the same fear as they showed to an oceguar stalking them through the jungle. 

Poe was prey, chained down and weakened by the IT-000. He couldn't see the monster's eyes, but he knew what it felt like to be pinned by the gaze of a predator.

"Do they know where he is?"

Rey shakes her head. Her jaw tics. "If they did, I'd take the Falcon and go finish him for what he did to Finn." She looks up. "And you."

"And the General," Poe says. "For Han. And what he did to you."

"I'm fine," Rey says, although her voice has a rasp that it didn't only minutes ago. She coughs, straightens Finn's collar once more, then stands. "I should go. I promised Master Luke that I would help him test – test little ones on the base for Force sensitivity. There aren't good odds, but any help is better than none."

If only Poe's sleeping Force connection—if that's what these dreams are, and not just him being a giant, old, lonely pervert—could do something _to help_. He could find the masked creature, not just wake drenched in sweat at the sound of his stomping boots. He could divine the way to beat the First Order once and for all and give Leia a timetable and strategies and a promise that it's all going to be worth it, in the end. He could give Rey some hope.

"I remember when Luke tested me," Poe says, and he smiles, though it feels a little thin. "My mom thought, maybe, since we had a Force tree growing in the yard outside my window… Luke said I'd probably be luckier than the average pilot, but it wasn't in the stars for me to become a Jedi."

"That's certainly lucky," Rey says over her shoulder as she pulls open Finn's privacy curtain. "You survived the massacre at his school by not being there." She smiles, too, and it's less sad than Poe would have expected. "I guess the Force had a different plan for you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long delay! It was a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I do think we'll probably have between a month and six weeks between chapters just because of the pace of my work. Also, I'm not gonna lie: TLJ's treatment of Poe bummed me out hard, and fandom's response has also been a bummer in some ways. I just wanna love Poe Dameron and Poe/Rey in peace, you know?! However, I absolutely cherish that people gave this fic a try, and I adore all of the comments. I always, always want to hear from and chat with fellow Poe fans and especially Poe/Rey fans, so hmu on Tumblr @[aimmyarrowshigh](http://aimmyarrowshigh.tumblr.com/asks). ♥


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